T
he concept of the curator
has become in recent
years more and more
influential. But while it
has been heavily
discussed, criticized and
theorized within the
visual arts, the function
of the programmer, producer, curator in the
performing arts remains strangely undebated. Even though programming in
dance, theatre, performance has undergone
fundamental changes over the last decades
there are barely any texts that reflect on its
specific role in art production, reception and
market.
This edition of Frakcija wants to give a
starting signal: In original contributions
renowned theorists and practitioners lay out
a field of possible discussion, by circling
around this job with the unclear profile.
While Beatrice von Bismarck and Hans Ulrich
Obrist refer to curatorial practices within the
visual arts (and point out the dramaturgical,
choreographic, theatrical strategies they
use), other texts move on from comparison
to defining the specifics of the genre itself:
Rebecca Schneider looks at the roots of what
the live in live arts, and what the curate in
curating means. Florian Malzacher
understands the curator as a specialised and
necessary sub-group of program-makers and
tries to define its functions. Goran Sergej
Pristaš talks about his personal experience of
the cultural contexts and figures in Western
Europe and beyond, while Elke Van
Campenhout, Christine Peters and Mårten
Spångberg demand new models of
contemporary curating, of dealing with art
and artists.
The impulse for this edition of Frakcija
came from artists though: Tea Tupajić and
Petra Zanki introduce via a letter to a curator
their Curators’ Piece, one of the surprisingly
rare works within performing arts that deals
with its very own means of production and
economy. Other artists contributions by Jan
Ritsema, Dan Perjovschi, Rabih Mroué, and
deufert&plischke not only mark the fact that
there are two sides in this game, but also
offer different approaches to the topic. All
photographs are taken from the ongoing
project Empty Stages by Tim Etchells and
Hugo Glendinning: Spaces of possibility but
at the same time just architecture, not more
and not less than a container for something
perhaps to come.
It is important to also talk about names,
as Hannah Hurtzig points out in a
conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter,
Virve Sutinen and Hilde Teuchies. Thus this
magazine ends with a Curators’ Glossary
which covers key terms related to the job –
in very individual ways: 25 of the most
influential curators of the field give short
subjective insights into their work.
Even though the primary aim of this
edition is to investigate and define the
unique particularities of curating in the
various forms of time-based art – theatre,
dance, performance – this issue touches in
its core the very questions of performing arts
production itself and wants to offer material
for a critical discourse for further and
broader reflection. What does it mean to
choose, who chooses, what implications do
these choices have? How are contexts
produced? How do these contexts produce
an added value? What is the role of the
performing arts in our affect-driven service
economy? What is its relationship to
discourse, how does it become political? In
what environment does art exists, what
environments would it like to create?
Performing arts were always the main
artistic means to ask the basic and the
urgent questions of society: a political
medium per se. It is time to ask ourselves
what our own roles in art, society and
economy are: As artists, as curators, as
audience.
Florian Malzacher, Tea Tupajić &
Petra Zanki
Contents
6
10
about programmers and curators
jan ritsema
22
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever
figure”
A conversation with gabriele brandstetter,
hannah hurtzig, virve sutinen & hilde teuchies
30
Looking Backwards
A personal travel through the former West and the
landscapes of programmig
goran sergej pristaš
38
Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Curating as environ-mentalism
elke van campenhout
44
“Diaghilev is the most important curator of the
20th century”
An Interview with exhibition maker
hans ulrich obrist
50
Relations in Motion
The curatorial condition in visual art – and its
possibilities for the neighbouring disciplines
beatrice von bismarck
Cause & Result
About a job with an unclear profile, aim and future
florian malzacher
58
62
Artists, Curators and In-Between
dan perjovschi
70
Motivation at the End of Times
To gain respect is just the beginning
mårten spångberg
Dead Hare, Live
The curate and the service economy
rebecca schneider
79
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
For a different culture of seeing, reflecting and
producing
christine peters
86
89
At Least One-third of the Subject
rabih mroué
96
Curators’ Glossary
A subjective short guide through the terminology of
curating
danjel andersson, norman armour, vincent
baudriller, sven Åge birkeland, tom bonte, marie
collin, lane czaplinski, sally de kunst, zvonimir
dobrović, juan domínguez, silvia fanti, vallejo
gantner, sigrid gareis, matthias von hartz,
stefan hilterhaus, veronica kaup-hasler, frie
leysen, matthias lilienthal, nayse lopez, barbara
raes, christophe slagmuylder, györgy szabó,
annemie vanackere, barbara van lindt & gordana
vnuk
115
118
The Curator as Mesostic and Asterisk
deufert&plischke
E-Mail to a Curator
An introduction to “The Curators’ Piece”
tea tupajić & petra zanki
Notes on
Contributors
Empty Stages
Photographs by
tim etchells & hugo glendinning
4
Bethnal Green WMC,
London
Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
5
6
about programmers and curators
jan ritsema
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
about
programmers
and curators
jan ritsema
do you see a difference between:
to prescribe (to pro-gram) or to cure?
i like to decide myself, about the way i want to be cured
i don’t mind when someone prescribes me things
i always see this as a proposition i can take or leave
but it is different when someone wants to cure me
it seems as if i have no choice anymore
i am right isn’t it?
but
and there is another devolution
a devolution is an evolution but backwards
with the word ‘cure’
curare is a substance taken from certain plants (lianes) in the amazonian forest
especially chondodendron tomentosum and strychnos toxifera
they provoke a paralyzation of the muscles
it has been used by indigenous indo-americans and aboriginals to endure the
arrows
quite some pro-grammers, curators as they like to be called today,
go for this paralyzing,
paralyzing the brain muscle
by curating known aesthetics
by curating the recognizable
maybe
pro-grammers, curators as they like to be called today,
could listen to the album difficult to cure (1981) by the british hardrock group
rainbow
and just prescribe the yet undefinable
the what they themselves don’t know yet
the uncurable
the uncuratable
the impossible
about programmers and curators
jan ritsema
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
7
the horrible
we not only ’don’t need heroes (tina turner) anymore
(luckily enough)
we ’don’t need doctors either
we need risk-takers
who don’t know whether their actions will kill or cure
who don’t mind
who only want to move and keep things moving
and finally
art and the artists will save them
instead of (what the curators think and pretend) that it would be the other way
around
but
there is a problem
art looks nowadays very often like art,
and artists look very often like artists
because the army of artists identified themselves so much with the cures
proposed by the curators,
that the world lacks art and artists who could save these curators
conclusion
art is lost
and
so are the curators
but
le roi est mort vive le roi
so
let’s go, both, hand in hand artists and programmers for a fresh beginning
a renaissance
of art that does not look like anything anymore
anything anymore
anything anymore
8
Centrepoint,
London
Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
9
10
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Cause
&
Result
What comes first
determines
what can happen
next, and what
happens
next
alters what has
come
before
About
a job with
an unclear
profile, aim
and future
Florian Malzacher
Translated from the German by Marina Miladinov
Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion Cheap Lecture
A
round the artist, around art. Among the professions
that are rather close to art or even right within, but not
artistic themselves, not directly artistic themselves, the
curator has the youngest and most unclear profile. In
the visual arts, where he became a star within a short
time, he is standing in the midst of a controversy that
is essentially driven by himself. In the field of dance,
theatre, and performance however, he is still rare and,
above all, mostly unheeded. Which is all the more surprising since he has long
played an influential role in independent performing arts, defining and
organizing art, discourses, formats, and finances.
Terminology as scarce commodity
Well, it belongs to the profile of many jobs in the free and experimental
international theatre (that is, theatre outside of the fixed structures and
relatively fixed aestheticisms of the repertory city theatres, which are mostly
active only within the limits of their countries and languages) that there is
actually no clear profile. What does a dramaturge do without a drama, an art
critic without a catalogue of criteria, a dancer without dance, a theatre
director without a text that should be staged? But the theatre curator does
not even have an outdated model of reference at his disposal: the
terminology and job description has been borrowed from the visual arts, as
their particular way of dealing with formats, with art and artists, and with
economies and audiences, suddenly seemed transferrable.
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
11
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Before that, in the 1980s and early 1990s, a good part of the
independent theatre landscape had changed considerably: radically new
aestheticisms, and later also new working structures and hierarchies within
ensembles, collectives, and companies came into existence along with new
or newly defined theatre houses and festivals. Above all, the concept of the
kunstencentra, which with their open, mostly interdisciplinary approaches
paved the way for many of today’s scene-heroes and re-classified the
audience, spilled over from Belgium and the Netherlands into the
neighbouring countries and made it possible to reinvent theatre as an
institution.
With them arrived a new, often charismatically filled professional
profile: that of the programme maker (who, depending on the institution,
would be officially called artistic director, Intendant, dramaturge, manager,
producer). As the name already shows, the accent was on taking a grip on
things, on making. A generation of men of action defined the course of
events – and even if their attitude seems occasionally patriarchal from
today’s point of view, the scene was actually less male-biased than the
society and the city theatres around it. This generation of founders, which at
the same time redefined and imported the model of the dramaturge,
established some remarkably efficient and stabile structures and publics: it
was a time of invention and discovery, which has had obvious repercussions
into the present day. Professional profiles were created and changed – also
that of the artist himself.
This foundation work was largely completed by the mid-1990s at the
latest (at least in the West), not least because financial resources were
becoming more scarce. What followed was a generation of former assistants,
of critical apprentices so to say, and with them a period of continuity, but
also of differentiation, reflection, and well-tailored networks, of development
and re-questioning new formats – labs and residencies, summer academies,
parcours, thematic mini-festivals, emerging artist platforms... The difficulty of
the plains replaces that of the mountains, the struggle over quality criteria
and discourses replaces the often socio-cultural founding-impetus to let very
different cultures coexist equally.
The picture is still dominated by transition models, but the strong
specialization of the arts (exemplified by the visual arts), the subsequent
specialization of the programme makers and dramaturges, and a generally
altered professional world – which also here increasingly relies on free,
independent, as well as cheaper labour – along with increasingly
differentiated audiences, again require a different professional profile: the
curator is a symptom of these changes in art, as well as in society and the
market. His working fields are theatre forms that often cannot be realized
within the established structures; artistic handwritings that always require
different approaches; a scene that is more and more internationalized and
disparate; the communication of often not easy aestheticisms; transmission
and contextualization. Last but not least, the curator is the link between art
and the public.
Whether the stolen term curator is the most suitable here for this job or
not is currently a popular point of dispute and, above all, polemics. However,
there is more at stake than personal gain in distinction to programme
makers, who might not feel appreciated enough. And the difficulty of naming
and defining this new job is just symptomatic for a genre in which
terminology is a scarce commodity anyway and which does not even have a
reasonably good name itself: Experimental theatre? Free theatre? All biased
“
Radically new
aestheticisms,
working structures
and hierarchies came
into existence along
with new or newly
defined theatre houses
and festivals.
12
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
or misleading. Time-based art? Live art? At least attempts at defining the
genres within different borders. Devised theatre, that is, a theatre that must
evolve again and again from scratch? New theatre – after all these years?
Postdramatic theatre? At least one successful, marketable keyword. But how
does the kind of dance that has been so influential in recent years, but is also
still looking for a suitable name, fit in here: conceptual dance?
As a clandestine romantic, one might consider the missing slate to be a
subversive gain and fashion it that way in the first place – an elitist thinking
in niches, but out of defensive resignation rather than self-confidence. In
fact, the lack of terminology indicates above all a lack of articulation, a lack of
communication not limited to advertising, a lack of more than purely intradisciplinary discourse in the performing arts, which remain amazingly
speechless in this respect. Thus it again signals the necessity of curatorial
work, which – as can be seen in the visual arts, where catalogues, for
example, are an integral part of almost all exhibitions – consists to a large
extent of verbalization, communication, and discussion. As a part of the
central task to create contexts.
Concrete contexts
“
Whether the
stolen term
Contexts. Links between artists, artworks, audiences, cultures, social and
political realities, parallel worlds, discourses, institutions. It is not by chance
curator is the most
that the curator in the visual arts sphere emerged at a time when artworks
suitable here for this
often no longer functioned without a context, refused to function without a
job is currently a
context. When they on the contrary began to define themselves precisely
popular point of
through their contexts, when they began to search or even create them, and
to critically question the institutions that surrounded them. When the idea of dispute and, above all,
an auratic artwork and auratic author disappeared and was replaced by art
polemics. However,
that was no longer understandable without relations. Additionally, the
there is more at stake
amount of information about and from our world and the complexity of art
has risen exponentially – as has the amount of art produced. The curator was than personal gain in
both a cause and a result of this development. Thus, the frequently expressed distinction.
wish of artists in the fields of dance and theatre (and quite logically much
more seldom in the visual arts) that their work be presented unexplained and
un-contextualised, standing there alone, without a framework, moves along
the thin line between justified fear of reduction, simplification, and
domestication on the one side, and the misjudgement of the ways their work
functions on the other. The muteness of the genre extends to all those who
participate in it.
Thus, good curatorial work would consist not in damaging the
autonomous art work in its autonomy, but on the contrary, in reinforcing it,
yet without considering it untouchable, too weak, needy of protection. How
near should the framework get to the artwork, how closely should one be
juxtaposed to the other, how charged should the surrounding be: these are
central points of discussion between artists and curators in exhibition art –
but they are just as valid when making programmes for a festival or a theatre
house. Contexts can offer artworks a proper reception – but they can also
incapacitate them.
And yet, theatre and dance performances are not paintings,
transportable artefacts, or even clearly defined installations. They are almost
always more demanding, in terms of staff, space, time, finances. That makes
it at least more difficult – if not impossible – to commission a thematically
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
fitting artwork than in the other arts. Thematic postulations can reasonably
only be derived from artistic production, occasionally perhaps through the
specific inspiration of an artist. In this way, thematically too narrow
programmes are, at least on a large scale, barely imaginable. But then again,
aren’t exhibitions in the visual arts that use artworks primarily for proving
their own theses also rather repulsive? (It is from a similar reason that quite a
lot of art/culture/dance/theatre-science-related literature is also actually
useless.)
Besides, a performance normally requires the undivided attention of its
recipients during a period of time that is defined by the artists. Thus, in the
theatre a visitor can barely and even more seldom spontaneously influence
the order in which he will see the artworks at a festival. Even if the
programming accepts (much too rarely!) the task of putting the presented
pieces in a relationship to each other, of seeing them as mutually
commenting or complementing, of intertwining them with exhibitions,
theory, or music, one can only understand the whole as a whole, if at all, on
paper – when reading the program book.
But the problem is not only in the sluggishness and temporal intensity
of the medium; rather centuries-long programme pragmatics, which have to
do more with casting possibilities, duration of the performance, and the
alleged obligation of a certain range of offerings than with aesthetic issues,
has prevented the audience, the critics, and also most of the programme
makers from developing an eye for interrelations. Even the artists themselves
cultivate an isolated view: they are hardly ever used to or interested in
grasping their own work in context, to put themselves in relation with others
(except in small reference groups). The singular work of art is – even if this is
often denied for discursive reasons – still the prevailing model in practice.
Few exhibitions have the complexity and unpredictability of a festival.
As a social form of art, theatre will always have a different attitude towards
pragmatism and compromise, will need more time and space, and therefore
stay inferior to other genres regarding agility. In an age of speed and
spacelessness that might be a market flaw, just as it was an advantage in
other times. But however cumbersome and relatively small the possibilities
of contextualization may be within a festival or a season condensed to knots,
they can also be very effective. The fact of not-being-able to-control is a
challenge that must be faced in a productive way, since not-wanting-tocontrol in this case only produces boredom.
So what can one see if one attends, on one evening, first a conceptually
clear, but supposedly hermetic work by deufert&plischke and then a supposedly ludicrous Cunningham-piece, performed by the Norwegian old-chaotic
Baktruppen? How does it change one work retrospectively and the other in
advance? (At least an exhibition curator rarely has the possibility of steering
the order of reception so precisely.) What influence does it exert on the
reception if a leitmotif or a theme is offered as the focus? What reference
points can be given for an artwork – perhaps also historically, at least on
paper or video? What contexts of experience are created for the spectators
already by the very choice of space, the point of time, the graphic design, the
advertising strategies? Is it possible not only to scatter theoretical postulates
like parsley over the programme, but also actually mix them in?
These are only some arbitrary examples of how good contexts and
focuses can be created – if so through the elaboration of smaller sections or
agglomerations/knots in the programme as a whole. After all, biennials and
museums are usually no adroit ships as well – and yet they play increasingly
13
14
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
often with their temporal axis, with the idea of the performative, the social.
The fact that the figure of the exhibition maker – primarily and almost
synonymous with the new type of curator, for example Harald Szeemann –
became so important in the 1970s is due not least to the fact that the
exhibition increasingly became a happening itself, sided or permeated by
accompanying events, occasionally changing, understanding itself within
time. Szeemann compared his work quite early with that of a theatre
director. In the 1990s, art was frequently adopting the definition of the
exhibition framework and discovering itself as a social space: Nicolas
Bourriaud has termed it “relational aesthetics” and Maria Lind speaks of
“performative curating”. It is hardly possible to penetrate more deeply into
the neglected core business of the theatre.
So this attention towards the arch, towards the dramaturgy of
programming, is also an attempt at recovering lost terrain for theatre as a
form of art. A course of events, a change of tempo, a change of intensity, a
change of viewpoint. Even if barely any spectator can follow such
dramaturgies in their entirety, they are nevertheless perceptible. One can
walk through a festival like through a landscape. Some things are accidental,
others are obvious. To linger or to go on, to grasp things intuitively or turn
them over intellectually. The phantom of the supercurator, the über-curator,
boldly creating his own piece out of other people’s artworks, is not to be
feared in the performative domain anyway. On the contrary, there is rather a
lack of courage for imparting meaning at all – and not least because of
modesty, but out of fear from the task.
Local context plays a role here more than in other arts; even the rather
small audience that is interested in advanced forms of theatre is far less
informed about the actual art field as a whole than its counterparts in the
visual arts, film, or music: it travels less and its artworks are more difficult to
access, respectively not reproducible in catalogues. As a rule (except for a few
big cities), it is a single venue or a single festival that alone defines the
horizon of the audience (as well as that of the local professional critics). The
terrain of its judgement is paradoxically demarcated by the curator himself –
only the art that he is showing actually exists. Thus, international artworks
are forcedly localized and placed into relation with that which is familiar. The
state of art is different in each town. Therefore, a local programme maker has
a quite considerable influence; he not only sets the artworks into a given
discourse, more than in the other arts he creates that discourse himself for
his own environment (at best in discrepancy to his predecessors). Thereby
the history and profile of his house or festival plays a role, and naturally so
does the level of the local performing artists’ scene (if existing and worth
mentioning at all) and the state of development of the bordering arts in
town – as well as the specific structure, openness, and the level of education
of the regional audiences.
Criteria and compromises
Whether locally or internationally, in the end it’s clear: it’s about choice,
about defining who is allowed to be a part of it, allowed to produce and
present, allowed to earn money. Programme makers have a function in the
art market and however much their opinions may differ, together they
delineate the limited field. Who they don’t see, who they refuse to see, has –
at least internationally – almost no chance of being seen. At the same time,
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
15
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
never before has so much art been produced, so many artists emerged. While
the budgets shrink, more and more schools, masters programs, university
departments are being founded and producing more and more artists,
mostly without considering what this overproduction may produce in itself.
In terms of market, of quality, but also with regards to the personal
situations of the former students, who are often not needed, not wanted and
not seldom also simply not good enough to survive in the highly competitive
market. The task of organising this field, the task of playing the bad guy has
been delegated: curating means excluding and this excluding has existential
consequences for artists.
So what are the criteria for such a selection? Yes, of course: good art,
bad art. What we consider as such. Defined by education, experience, taste.
By opinion. By the discourses we believe in. Even that narrow borderline area
of experimental theatre, which we have chosen for our field of activity, is the
result of a far-reaching decision.
They are difficult to name, these criteria, and they consist of various
aspects. What good art is, that is anyway not possible to formulate here and
en passant. But it is not even central: the reproach (made by those artists or
spectators who disapprove of the choice) is anyway mostly not that curators
had the wrong criteria. But none at all. That compromise, politics, aping, or
craving for admiration is what actually writes the programme. That it is
either too narrow or too broad.
For sure, it is a thin line indeed between dogmatism and arbitrariness. It
defines itself through a clear style, a recognisable handwriting perhaps,
through coherency of the programme, through a dramaturgy of procedure,
through relationships. Through stringency. Of course it’s true: just as most
city theatres put together their program out of all kinds of art for all kinds of
audiences, thus also most international festivals and venues are just as well
marked by a difficult to discern mixture of conviction and pragmatism.
The arguments for keeping it somewhat broader are numerous, and all
programme makers are schooled in them: not excluding any segment of the
public, creating contexts, placing more audacious pieces aside next to more
popular ones, visitor numbers, ticket sales, tolerance towards other artistic
approaches, financial difficulties, and more. Indeed, it doesn’t help anyone if a
curator wants to prove with his program primarily his own courage – eventually at the cost of the artists. To establish and maintain a festival, to bind
an audience, to win allies, and thus to create a framework also for artworks
that are more consequential, more audacious, and more cumbersome is
important. Especially since free spaces for art are becoming fewer and fewer,
since the struggle of all programme makers for the survival of their programmes is becoming tougher and tougher. And since the belief that good art is
only what nobody likes is a transparent form of artists’ self-protection.
And yet, what is the use of maintaining that what should actually be
maintained if it is no longer visible? If it is no longer legible, what is the
necessary and compellable in the midst of the pragmatic? The model of the
curator is also a counter-model of the cultural manager, who values many
things, who stakes off a broad field of creativity and artistic activities, whose
aim is, after all, socio-cultural. Curatorial work also means deciding clearly for
oneself what is good and what is bad. And knowing why.
But a good programme does not consist simply or necessarily only of
good performances. On the one side, the decision in favour of co-productions and against merely shopped guest performances is immensely important
in terms of cultural policy. But it is also a decision for risk, the results
“
In the end it’s
clear: it’s about
choice, about defining
who is allowed to be a
part of it, allowed to
produce and present,
allowed to earn
money.
16
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
imponderable; the right decisions can lead to a bad festival if one reads it
only with respect to its results rather than its endeavours. On the other side,
it is about creating internal relationships – even if a festival does not give
itself a thematic red thread. Whether a programme is well thought out
depends on the combination of different formats, aestheticisms, and
arguments within a nevertheless very clearly outlined profile. But it also
depends on the supposedly more pragmatic, but often no less dramaturgical
considerations, which can play a considerable role in the beauty of a
programme: for it can indeed happen that a performance is simply too long
for a particular slot. Or too short. Or needs a different sort of stage. That it is
the wrong genre. Thematically or aesthetically too similar to another show.
Or too different. And yet, if it is worth it, one will probably find a solution. And
yes, one must also fill in the slots: young, entertaining, political, conceptual,
new, established... But there is also this: as soon as one stumbles across a
piece that one wants to present by all means, one will quickly forget about
this basic structure. If one is left with some spare money, of course.
Moreover, the local question belongs to the list of possible criteria:
what possibilities are there for changing or influencing the scene of a town in
terms of infrastructure – but also for presenting it, for giving it visibility and
capacity for confrontation and growth. Every curator will say: one must
primarily think in terms of quality. And yet, consciously or not, he will
measure with a double standard. There is a thin line here as well: without
local and also sustainable effects, an internationally oriented theatre house
or festival will largely remain without impact and without backing in hard
times. And vice versa: even the finest motives can soon turn into provinciality
and lack of significance beyond the region.
While artistic work lives off of consistency and the greatest possible
resistance to compromise, a festival programme, a seasonal programme,
already even a small parcours, will always carry compromise within it like a
birthmark. It is also for this reason that the curator is not an artist. This
discrepancy is essential and often painfully indelible. Not only because
curators are not seldom too ready for concessions. And not only because
artists rarely make good curators: their view is always either to narrow (since
they are guided by their own aesthetic intransigence) or too broad (since
they are guided by social and solidary thoughts and feelings).
There is no reason why compromise should be romanticized with heroic
pathos of action (“The show must go on”). But it will always remain a subject
of conflict – especially where the art itself is existential, radical, ready to take
risks. The quest of the absolute will bump against the necessity of presenting
a turn-key product in the end. All the new modules of processual work, all
those labs and residencies, are merely vents that eventually miss the real
problem: it is not about not being willing to finish, being able to finish. It is
that “finished” should be defined differently for each project.
What market?
As a programme maker, one relegates a part of the constraints one is unable
to absorb himself to the artists. So, where is the limit? How long should one
fight, when should one give up? How long is it good to preserve something,
even if reduced, and when is it better to withdraw consequently? What is
hasty obedience to politics and money? And what is litigant quixotism?
“
The model of
the curator is
also a counter-model
of the cultural
manager, who values
many things, who
stakes off a broad field
of creativity and
artistic activities,
whose aim is, after all,
socio-cultural.
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
The market of independent theatre, and eventually theatre as such, is a
well-cushioned one, mostly regulated through public money and
foundations. In recent times, more and more sponsors have come into play,
but in Europe their role is still mostly too limited to have an influence on the
programme that would be worth mentioning: the fact that the Dublin Fringe
Festival recently – since the emergence of a vodka producer as its main
sponsor – changed its name into Absolut Fringe is an unusual case, perhaps
heralding the future. Mostly the market is too small, the audience too
marginal, the profit too limited, and the genre not sexy enough for investors.
Also the volatile medium is rather unsuitable for the free art market: a
performance cannot be bought and hung on a wall; it cannot be collected
and doesn’t gain value; it does not even impart a special status. That is why
the artists of performance art (to be distinguished from the performing arts)
have since the 1970s taken much care, together with their galleries, lest the
supposedly ephemeral aspect of their work should be to their financial
disadvantage – and have elevated video or photo documentation to the
status of an artefact. Live art is performance art only for a brief moment
before the immaterial work has clotted into an object. Theatre and dance
makers, however, have almost no access to the free market, to that form of
old age insurance. Which at least has the advantage that a curator (or art
critic) cannot profit from the artworks of those artists whom he is promoting
– we are spared this part of potential corruption.
On the other hand, many a visual artist will cast a look of envy to the
subvention market of dance and theatre, since it seems to offer protection
against the at times hysterical capitalism of the free art market. But the 80s
are long gone: the subventions, anyway sinking, are increasingly spent on the
maintenance of institutions that are weighty in real estate and personnel,
and little is left for the slim independent scene. Whereas Western European
countries can mostly still nibble at the achievements from the previous years,
countries that could not knot an infrastructural security network are mostly
left to the direct mercy of economy with its ups and downs. Protection of the
subvention market is now unmasked as a cage, since one can hardly reach
the means of the free market.
Surely there is an individual market value in theatre as well, surely it is
important, of course, at which festival or in which venue one can be seen. But
the demand regulates the price only to a certain degree, and the system of
salaries remains comparably limited. Thus, the pressure of the market tips
over its tops – it does not diminish for the artists, which are mostly
precarious existences, not only as beginners. In the eyes of many artists, the
curator, the programme maker, the intendant is – despite all amiability –
part of a system of humiliation, which remains obscure, since its criteria are
insufficiently reflected both by the curators and by the artists. Austrian writer
Thomas Bernhard once wrote to his publisher Siegfried Unseld that the main
problem was that each publisher had many authors, but each author had
only one publisher. A theatre maker may have more than one producer – yet
the unequal relationship of dependence, both economic and psychological,
remains similar.
But obviously the programme makers are not independent either. The
money that they distribute, or maybe invest, is obtained from their
employers, mostly political ones (who again have it via taxes from people).
They are rarely subjected to direct thematic pressure as for making specific
programmes, at least in the West; politics and the public usually no longer
exert their influence with regard to a specific type of art and a specific
17
18
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
discourse – barely anyone wants to be denounced as a conservative
ignorant. The course is rather already set before the appointment or through
the appointment of the artistic direction, then the discussion is usually
reduced to economic factors, cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and capacity
utilization rather than to themes and aestheticisms. Since festivals and
theatre houses are never cost efficient, they should at least be profitable on
the other side: through urban marketing, image, tourism, number of
overnight stays... And yet, engaging in an argument of indirect returns via
Richard Florida’s rhetoric of the “creative class” is dangerous for art
institutions – on the one hand, the reduction of art to numbers can hardly be
reversed, and on the other hand, economic arguments are often just
pretextual, behind them stands the same old doubt as to the necessity of
contemporary art, whose value has drastically sunken with the
disappearance of the once mocked Bildungsbuerger from politics.
Programme makers are indeed responsible for the money that they
have been entrusted with. Contractually, they are usually answerable to their
public funders (at least indirectly, through politically appointed supervisory
boards). And morally? To the artists? The art? The audience? The dilemma is
intensified through the fact that there is, unlike in the world of museums,
only seldom any difference between a director and a curator – especially
freelancing and often changing curators with more independence and
autonomy are rare. Thus, the political pressure of numbers is exerted directly
on the person that creates the programme – mixed loyalties are unavoidable.
The model of the curator is therefore decisively not that of a director; he is
supposed to be responsible primarily to artists, art, specific discourses, and
specific aestheticisms. Rather indeed an imaginary (perhaps naïve) figure
than a reality. A construct, at least.
The Starbucks coffee of art
But perhaps the problem lies anyway not so much in the fact that there is
inequality, that there is injustice, that there is always a hidden agenda behind
the association of curators and artists, that their relationship is always also
an economic one. Perhaps the problem resides much more in the fact that it
is precisely the theatre, that large machine for reflecting the world and
oneself, that lacks sufficient reflection on the mechanisms to which we as
programme makers are exposed, mechanisms that we, however, also use and
sometimes generate by ourselves. That we tend to console ourselves quickly
with the belief that without us it would all be even worse, that we are still
taking the best out of a situation that is becoming worse.
We are products of what Slavoj Žižek has termed “cultural capitalism”:
we drink the Starbucks coffee of art and we are happy that a part of our
money protects the rainforest (for example: conceptual dance, young artists,
research). It is a pseudo-proper action, since eventually it primarily protects
the system whose spikes we believe to be filing down. It is the same system
in which we first produce the defects and then we try to alleviate them. We
want power that should not be recognizable as such.
Thus, barely anything that the profession of the curator in the
performing arts consists of is new in itself. And yet, it is important to see how
the professional image differs from other genres, as well as from the
programme maker of the founders’ generation. From that of the production
dramaturge. From that of the intendant, the artistic director, the manager.
“
It is precisely
the theatre,
that large machine for
reflecting the world
and oneself, that lacks
sufficient reflection on
the mechanisms to
which we are exposed,
mechanisms that we
also use and
sometimes generate
by ourselves.
Cause & Result
Florian Malzacher
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
The independent performing arts, these arts in a niche without a proper
name, need articulation, contextualization, discourses, and publicity in order
to be able to take their deserved place among the contemporary arts. The
curator is one of the symptoms of a change. Seen that way, it is indeed a gain
in distinction. But less so for the ones who call themselves curators than for
an art form that should be finally recognized as more than an exotic
accessory to city theatres and repertory companies.
— For P. —
19
20
Dukes Theatre,
Lancaster
Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
21
22
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure”
A conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter, Hannah Hurtzig,
Virve Sutinen & Hilde Teuchies
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
“This curator-producerdramaturge-whatever
figure”
A conversation with dance theorist Gabriele Brandstetter, artist and curator Hannah Hurtzig, IETM president, former
co-founder of Kiasma Theatre Helsinki and current director of Dansens Hus Stockholm Virve Sutinen, and former IETM
co-ordinator and producer Hilde Teuchies.
T
here was a shift in the concept of
programming or curating in the
performing arts in the late eighties, early
nineties in Europe: It was the time when
all those production centres in Belgium,
the Netherlands but similar also in
Germany and other countries were
founded, and festivals like Eurokaz in
Zagreb were established. Hannah, you were co-founder of
Kampnagel at that time – How did it come to that?
hurtzig: I’m afraid my answer is quite disillusioning: The
woman running cultural policy in Hamburg asked two other
women – Mücke Quinckardt and me – to run Kampnagel and
gave us 20,000 DEM for one year’s programming. That was
in 1985 and we had no experience whatsoever. We just
started: one table, two chairs, a phone between us.
teuchies: At the same time in Flanders a lot of art centres
were founded – but the initiative did not come from some
visionary person in the administration. It was people like you
and me saying: “There are so many interesting changes in the
art field and so many young artists who cannot find a
platform. So we will create our own.” An old socialist building
was squatted in Ghent, a student meeting place at the
University of Leuven was transformed into a performance
space, a small old warehouse in the centre of Brussels was
rented, etc. And so this is how the art centres Vooruit, STUK
and Kaaitheater were started. Others soon followed …
hurtzig: … well, I was a bit laconic about it. Of course
Kampnagel was squatted as well, and taken hostage before
the politics came in. And after that nevertheless we had to
fight every year again against the wrecking ball.
teuchies: In Flanders the margin for setting up new
initiatives was relatively large. At that point we did not have
a well-elaborated cultural policy and the cultural landscape
was not defined by large and heavy art institutions. In that
respect, the situation was completely different than the one
in France or Germany. There was room for manoeuvring.
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure”
A conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter, Hannah Hurtzig,
Virve Sutinen & Hilde Teuchies
Moreover, the distance between people working on a grassroot level in the arts field on the one hand, and the decision
makers on the other hand, was relatively small.
brandstetter: Perhaps that’s the reason why there were
so many innovations in theatre especially from Flanders and
the Netherlands: the structures were very open and
undefined. That changed something within the politics of
culture, and in aesthetics as well: These centres were
displaced; they blurred the differences between high and low
culture and irritated the hierarchies and rankings within art.
There was a growing fluidity and flexibility of thought and
public awareness… So it really was an important historical
change: The openness not to know what should happen, but
working within the situation. And the role models of a
program maker or a dramaturge is open now for definition:
you are an organizer, you are a creative director, a program
maker, a compilator…
hurtzig: We considered ourselves dilettantes, total
amateurs in all fields. And our Flemish colleagues were
already ahead. When we didn’t even know how to produce,
Hugo De Greef had already started to talk about the ethics of
the producer. The work they did in Belgium, and you can
name other colleagues – and actually, we should talk about
names, because names do matter in this story – the work
they did, produced a climate where all these artists became
visible: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jan Fabre, Jan Lauwers,
Luc Perceval, and many others, as well as dramaturges like
Marianne Van Kerkhoven. And there was politics and
competition. All together this was a Belgium success
machine for over 10 years.
teuchies: At that time, we did not talk about whether
someone was a curator, a programmer or a dramaturge.
Rather I would call people like Hugo De Greef (Kaaitheater),
Erik Temmerman (Vooruit), Theo Van Rompay and Guido
Minne (STUK) or Denis Van Laeken (Monty) responsible
producers. If the artists needed a festival, Hugo would make a
festival. If the artists needed a permanent space to work in
Leuven, then Guido and Theo would go and develop a space.
They were the people that discretely accompanied the artists.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
23
hurtzig: I don’t agree. The appearance of the new
producers-programmers on the stage was not discreet and
shy. They created a different style of how to talk about
theatre and dance, how to write about performance. Within
a very short time they were running the discourse. If it came
to policy of the arts, to the actual aesthetics of this policy
and where to move from there, you’re better talking to a
producer than to an artist. This was a shift, a big entrance.
They were providing better stages and better networks for
artists, but they were also the authors of this new discourse.
And through this they became very important and powerful
and unconquerable.
teuchies: I would add that they were functioning as
sounding boards for a lot of young artists. In this sense they
were something like mentors and this is not to be
underestimated.
brandstetter: The really new thing was that there were
people that didn’t cling to old role models or traditional ideas
of art. They allowed themselves to think without borders. So
they could create open spaces of which perhaps even the
artists did not think of. They created a new role model that
was composed out of a lot of roles. And this atmosphere also
created a new discourse – “Theaterschrift” for example was a
journal that connected a multiplicity of voices and ideas.
That it was published in four languages was also a signal not
to think locally and to create new spaces for thinking.
What belongs in this context is that something within
theatre studies also changed – for example, the Applied
Theatre Studies in Gießen, which combined theory with
practice, was founded in 1982. But there was also – to widen
the geographical view – Knut Ove Arntzen with his theatre
studies in Bergen, Norway. This is also where Sven Åge
Birkeland founded his Teatergarasjen in 1984.
sutinen: Yes, but in Scandinavia it comes out of a very
different reality. The whole society went through a profound
change in Finland. Helsinki University Student House, Vanha,
The appearance of the new producers-programmers on the stage
was not discreet and shy. They created a different style of
how to talk about theatre and dance, how to write about
performance.
24
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure”
A conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter, Hannah Hurtzig,
Virve Sutinen & Hilde Teuchies
was a central place for change in culture and arts. Raisa
Rauhamaa, and Bo Isse Karsten were one of the first to visit
IETM meetings. They were responsible for bringing Jan Fabre
and La Fura dels Baus. These visits had a strong impact on
my generation. Again it was the Cultural Centre which
gathered the doers and the movers of music, dance, theatre...
It is hard to imagine how closed and far out Finland was
then. One could claim that a lot of the new culture was
copied and imported, but it was also happening in the
aftermath of punk, a strong DIY culture, environmental
movement, and squatting, which empowered a whole new
generation of artists, producers, and academics.
So it was quite different from the situation in Belgium for
example, where the places were founded for an existing,
strong artistic community?
sutinen: It might be characteristic for societies that are
opening up that all this burst of activity, social, artistic,
political, economical, is intertwined. And the change was also
embraced by institutions like Helsinki Festival, which turned
from a classical music festival to include not only other art
forms, but also popular art.
hurtzig: I would like to come back to this figure, this
curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure and add a bit
more chutzpah instead of glory to the portrait. We were also
able and ready for clever management of our personal
deficits. We invented new spaces and work to create
discontinued studies, strange working biographies and failed
schemes of life fit for the new times to come and to model
new careers. And we were looking for auratic figures, who
could give a theoretical, maybe more philosophical
background for our practical work. And there was Ritsaert
ten Cate, who founded the Mickery and later the artist school
DasArts, and whom we could adore. The wish to connect
theory and praxis was very strong from the beginning.
It would be actually interesting to reconstruct what Ritsaert
was reading at that time. I remember Lloyd deMausse, David
Riesman...
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
teuchies: Ritsaert was, of course, also an artist himself. He
was personally maybe not interested so much in theory, but
he would surround himself with people who would back
things up theoretically. This is for sure what Hugo De Greef
was doing when he soon after engaged Marianne Van
Kerkhoven to work with him at Kaaitheater. It was very
unusual – and still is – to have a permanent dramaturge in a
venue without a permanent ensemble. No other art centre in
Flanders had it.
brandstetter: Even though there always seems to be a gap
between theory and practice or even a resistance against
theory, a very specific and new way to interweave them both
emerged at that time. This was the starting point for
something that has only now just became an important
dimension of our reflection: how to use theory not just as a
framework but to also think of it as part of practice and the
other way around.
sutinen: Artists, producers, and academics, shared agency in
the middle of huge political and social change. It was more
straightforward, learning by doing, and DIY, which blurred all
boundaries, and influenced what could be called the practice.
It was during the 90s that performance studies offered us a
way out of this quite reactionary practice. It was punk
(ideology?) for many of us: the aim was to create
independent, even autonomy, spaces, not open, but free. In
my books, later in the nineties, this idealistic urge developed
into a more sophisticated understanding of the postmodern
state. Those theories came to the interest of artists, producers,
and scholars.
There is still no specialized education for curators in the
performing arts. While in the beginning it was the
development of a totally new job profile, today young
curators learn from role models, who they follow or dismiss.
teuchies: In Flanders there were no schools or university
departments to train dramaturges or producers or art
managers. Many artists and all producers and dramaturges at
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure”
A conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter, Hannah Hurtzig,
Virve Sutinen & Hilde Teuchies
that time were self-educated. But recently theatre schools
have drastically changed, and in the last five, seven years
there has been a whole new bunch of young dramaturges
starting their professional lives in the performing arts. Some
of them work with production houses, some with companies,
some will become programmers; many of them have been
coached by Marianne Van Kerkhoven when taking their first
steps in the profession. She is the godmother of Flemish
dramaturgy.
sutinen: Well, as much as you could follow what Ritsaert
ten Cate was reading, you should follow where Marianne Van
Kerkhoven was travelling. Her impact was crucial in
reforming the performing arts education. I am sure the
Theatre Academy in Finland was not the only one where she
implanted a different way of thinking about dramaturgy. For
a little while dramaturgy became the key concept, or
organizing principle for thinking. It was also applied to a wide
range of practices, like curating or programming.
hurtzig: I would be interested in knowing how the term
curator, that we know from visual arts, has entered our
system. For me this is still a bit mysterious. In the 1980s and
early 1990s we were called programmers or program makers.
That also included from time to time the production of a
catalogue or a book, to have conferences, and to programme
according to themes and topics. So why is it now suddenly
called curating? Is it about distinction, upgrading the job?
teuchies: In France or in Belgium the term curator isn’t
used in the performing arts field.
hurtzig: Good to hear!
brandstetter: I would say that the term itself changed
and the change concerns its meaning in visual arts as well.
And it now not only appears in the performing arts but also
in other disciplines. So is it only an indicator of the
delineating between the different arts and the different
discourses? Or is there something interesting or new as well?
I think it might be that curating in the performing arts brings
in a way of choreographic thinking into the programming.
This could mean to conceive the curating process as a form
of research: as an endeavour that is exploratory,
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
25
collaborative and dynamic. And it could mean that we
rethink the strategies of curating in terms of choreography:
in terms of composing space, objects and bodies, in opening
paths and structures of participation and placement through
movement. Since we do not have established criteria for
these transformative processes, this could be the challenge
for a process of exploration within or as curating.
Originally the curator was mainly an archivist and collector,
from the fifties onward the idea of the exhibition maker
became popular – which led to the concept of the curator as
we understand it today. In our field, with all the houses and
festivals that were founded mainly in the last thirty years,
people are naturally trying to define their own role in these
structures – and there the term curator offers interesting
possibilities.
Virve, you run a theatre within the institution of the
contemporary visual arts museum Kiasma. Can you describe
the difference in curating?
sutinen: I don’t think there is much of a difference in terms
of research and content development, and in Kiasma in the
early years it was often done together in a team of curators
and producers. The fine arts field has traditionally been quite
academic, upper class, and international, while Finnish
theatre has had a strong nationalistic ethos, and close ties
with the people’s movement and with the left. This historical
hierarchy was challenged when new generations of
interdisciplinary artists walked into the institutions and used
any available context, space or situation suitable for their
vision. Within a structure like Kiasma these differentiations
became meaningless.
hurtzig: But for obvious reasons you cannot curate a
performance festival like an exhibition, we cannot go back in
time, it’s complicated to recreate or re-enact work, you
cannot turn this into a daily practice of a festival or a theatre
program. In theatre any conceptional idea, any concept, is
only worth max. 20% concerning the result, the rest is
carrying stuff from here to there.
Curating in the performing arts brings in a way of
choreographic thinking. We rethink the strategies of
curating in terms of composing space, objects and bodies,
in opening paths and structures of participation and
placement through movement.
26
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure”
A conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter, Hannah Hurtzig,
Virve Sutinen & Hilde Teuchies
Still, in combination with theory, exhibitions, films you can
go a bit more in the direction of a topic-based festival…
sutinen: Perhaps the differences between the
contemporary fine arts and the contemporary performing
arts are much less than between old and contemporary art in
general. Instead of concentrating on the differences, we were
actively investigating the connections between, and the
obvious in-betweens, which were of interest to the artists
too. Naturally, the difference did not disappear but the
meeting would create moments of lapses, which opened up
the space in ways that were not concerned with differences
in practice.
Gabriele Brandstetter, within your Master of Dance Studies
at Freie Universität Berlin there is a segment that deals with
curating. You bring your students together with future visual
arts curators. How much common ground is there, where are
the limitations?
brandstetter: We just have a small section where we deal
with curating, so the idea was to bring the students together
for a week with the students of curatorial studies in visual
arts by Beatrice von Bismarck in Leipzig. We went to the
Baumwollspinnerei, which is now an interesting area of very
different galleries and production places. The visual arts
students thought much more in terms of the political and
the economical and especially in terms of the architectural.
And the performing arts people thought much more in terms
of movement and time and dramaturgy. And also in terms of
audience – they wanted to open the whole space into the
city, and they wanted to explore possibilities of participation:
how to provide an interface of different time frames,
between the history of an industrial place and the space,
now, for contemporary art forms.
hurtzig: Only people coming from theatre and
performance arts are concerned with the role of the
spectator, or at least have an interesting way of integrating
the idea of the spectator already in the working process.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Hannah, you went through most of the job profiles we were
talking about: You were a dramaturge, a program maker,
now with your Blackmarket you do something that could be
called curatorial art. How would you describe the differences
and similarities?
hurtzig: When I work as a dramaturge, I try to undo the
dramaturge in the process. Basically following a rule of selfviolation: it is more important when you say something than
what you say. As a curator I try to minimise the role of the
curator. For the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and NonKnowledge we are researching one hundred experts to talk
about a specific topic, but we don’t make a list of the 100
most interesting people. We don’t cast the experts
concerning their performative qualities: someone has specific
expertise which adds to the chosen topic, we meet him or
her to discuss in detail their talk, but we don’t care if he or
she is a good or charming talker. We try to minimise the
function of the curator as the one that decides, judges, has
opinions.
teuchies: But the way you are creating context is already a
way of curating – you are creating a pattern in which things
happen and frame it very clearly.
hurtzig: This is of course true. I call it establishing a system,
I also like the term by Irit Rogoff: opportunity, creating an
opportunity. And we are trying to get rid of the authorship
by franchising the project. People can buy a Blackmarket
licence and do it by themselves.
The visibility and the influence of the curator is an important
point: How much impact on the work do you have, how
much freedom do you give, how much do you frame it? In
visual arts imposing a topic on artists is quite common and
many visual artists are open for that – for different reasons
relating to the specific conditions of their work. But as a
performing artist you would say: “Sorry, I have my projects
planned for the next two years, maybe after that.” The
flexibility and speed and size and budget implications of the
different media play important roles.
“This curator-producer-dramaturge-whatever figure”
A conversation with Gabriele Brandstetter, Hannah Hurtzig,
Virve Sutinen & Hilde Teuchies
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
27
sutinen: Is it really so different?
teuchies: I think it is. I was discussing it with Guy Gypens,
director of Kaaitheater in Brussels who is making a
programme on…
sutinen: … Climate change.
teuchies: Which is an important subject. So how can artists
and programmers deal with the subject of climate change?
And is it okay to commission artists to make a piece on this
subject? In the visual arts field many artists have been
creating work related to this theme for ten, even twenty
years!
sutinen: But in the visual arts this is initiated by the artists
not by the curators.
brandstetter: So it is about decision-making, how much
you set topics, how much you want to shape work? Perhaps
this struggle, the limitations and the possibilities could be
included as a visible part of programming.
hurtzig: You mean that the curator makes himself and his
methodology transparent?
brandstetter: Yes but not as a person, but within the
system and the structure – even if the personal style is
important.
teuchies: The curator in visual arts has more freedom to be
creative with what he wants to say with the exhibition than
a programmer in the performing arts. Programming a venue
or a festival is not the same at all as making an art exhibition.
Although we can see a growing tendency in the performing
art centres in Belgium to set up short intensive programming
periods based on a certain theme or concept…They often
include not only a presentation of finished theatre or dance
performances but also works-in-progress, debates,
conferences and even visual art exhibitions or hybrid
presentations. So this becomes a bit more ‘curating’…
sutinen: Another major difference is that the visual arts
curators are often also interpreting what they are doing, for
example in catalogues which are an important part of an
exhibition. Providing context, a presentational frame, and
analytical interpretation, is crucial for the identity for visual
arts curators, but sometimes still feels as optional with
performing arts curators.
Moderated by Florian Malzacher, Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
Providing context, a presentational frame, and analytical
interpretation, is crucial for the identity for visual arts
curators, but sometimes still feels as optional with
performing arts curators.
28
Kings Head Pub,
London
Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
29
30
Looking Backwards
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Looking
Backwards
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at that time i learned
several important words:
co-production
network
dissemination
programmer
interculturalism
information void
cultural management.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
A personal
travel through
the former
West and the
landscapes of
programming
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Translated from the Croatian by Una Bauer
T
hey were all carried over with the hot winds of the 1980s
when history, for a certain cultural context, was just
about to start. For some other cultural contexts, history
was approaching its zenith, just before the coming abyss
of the 1990s. At that time the so-called ‘independent
scene’ was flourishing in Zagreb. This independence
should of course be understood conditionally, because
the scene was deeply entwined with the Association of
the Socialist Youth of Croatia, the organization that silently verified the
activities of the young and created opportunities for their public funding
through their cultural centres.
It is also a fact that the members of the Association, youth activists at
that time, who are now in charge of most cultural structures in the City of
Zagreb, still have trouble understanding the notion of independence in civil
society.
The impetus for youth cultural production in the 1980s in Zagreb was
most certainly provided by an event, treated locally in Olympic-size
proportions – the international university sports event: the Universiade.
Together with massive infrastructural investments, Zagreb gained an
internationally relevant theatre festival – Eurokaz, whose importance was
confirmed by the fact that it hosted the IETM already in 1990. At that time,
IETM was also an internationally relevant theatre network. The acronym
IETM stood for Informal European Theatre Meeting at that time, while today
the network is called the International Network for Contemporary
Performing Arts (the acronym remaining the same). For a dramaturgy
Looking Backwards
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
31
student and a theatre critic of an independent radio station with an
inclination towards the cultural novum (Radio 101), that was a fascinating
period: new theatre (Flemish, NSK, Wooster, Corsetti, Raffaelo Sanzio,
Jesurun, La fura…), new institutions (Kaai, Mickery, TAT, Hebbel, Kampnagel,
Felix Meritis), new dramaturgy (Claudia Castellucci, Marianne Van Kerkhoven,
Eda Čufer, Norman Frisch)…
That period was filled with multiplicities in discursive production as
well: new productions from the new institutions were gaining strength
through international cooperation; however it needed new points of
contextualization and a new glossary of terms in management and in policy.
Performing arts theory was looking for new terms and was borrowing them
from other theoretical discourses (philosophy, literary theory, visual arts
criticism, musicology). That process culminated in the publication of a
glossary of new dramaturgy in the journal Theaterschrift. However, their
mutual questioning and symbiosis are important to this day. Management
wrapped up in programming, programming wrapped up in dramaturgy,
dramaturgy wrapped up in theory, theory wrapped up in performance,
performance wrapped up in education, education wrapped up in
dissemination, dissemination wrapped up in management…
It is important to note that the same period in the West was marked by
two performance heroes: the programmer and the dramaturge. Both were
formed in order to articulate the distinction from direction, either from art
direction or from directing as art. In Zagreb, on the other hand (and in
Yugoslavia as well), the key differentiation was in relation to political
directing which provided a format for a new hybrid praxis of an artist that
creates, produces, reflects, publishes, presents and distributes.
Travel
The same period in the
West was marked by
In 1989, after finding out that the next IETM would take place in Zagreb, I
bought an InterRail ticket and, together with a friend who had nothing to do
two performance
with the theatre field, decided to travel around Europe and visit the new
heroes: the programcentres of theatre production.
mer and the dramaMemories are hazy and unclear, but here is what I believe happened:
turge. Both were
We were travelling during the night, and our day goal was to visit the
key places and meet the key people, possibly also to collect some material for formed in order to
the radio and to get ourselves ready to cover the IETM.
articulate the
The official means of communication at that time was the fax machine
distinction from
which didn’t guarantee regular delivery of documents, and international
direction, either from
phone calls were extremely expensive.
Our first two destinations – Wiener Festwochen, or rather their
art direction or from
programmes Big Motion and Theater am Turm in Frankfurt – ended up a flop; directing as art.
we couldn’t talk to anyone from the direction because they were away, and
we waited unsuccessfully for three hours for Tom Stromberg to see us. It
should be said that the Vienna festival, together with BITEF, was immensely
important for the education of Croatian and Slovenian artists. While Eurokaz
at that time managed to bring over the not overly expensive productions of
Rosas, Fabre, Needcompany, Jesurun, Castellucci, we were still travelling to
Vienna to see Wooster Group, Lepage, Sellars, Abdoh etc. In order to see
Wilson, people travelled to Germany, and the stories about travelling through
socialist countries and then crossing the border on foot to Berlin in order to
save some money are mythical today.
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Looking Backwards
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
We had no desire to stay at TAT for a long time because the spirit of the
office reminded us of the German-Austro-Hungarian offices that we were all
too familiar with from our local theatres.
At Kampnagel, we were personally welcomed by Hannah Hurtzig, art
director of the centre at the time. She showed us around during a two-hour
conversation. We were completely swept away by the factory space turned
into a cultural centre. On our way out of socialism, we still couldn’t quite get
the hang of the fact that the industrial age was soon to end up in the
suburbs and open up possibilities for that kind of space transformation in
Croatia too. From today’s perspective, it is clear that this transformation was
practically impossible because of the wild domination of private capital that
changed laws to suit its interests. The locations of former Zagreb factories
turned out to be immensely profitable.
The shapes of the 1980s difference were visible already at Kampnagel: a
female team, programming of problems, cool fun and politics as
disagreement.
Speculation
A few years ago, while we were having lunch in Graz, Hannah Hurtzig asked:
“Why is everybody so focused on education all of a sudden? Why do we all
care about it so much now?”
The question, of course, was directed at the art scene and the cultural
institutions.
One possible answer was that we are confronted with the possible
“concrete appropriation and re-articulation of the knowledge/power unity
that has congealed within the administrative modern machine of the state”
(Paolo Virno: A Grammar of the Multitude), a situation characterized by the
growing “general intellect” in the public sphere. However, it is important to
understand the dislocation of educational structures from the existing
institutional framework of the academies and universities into the noninstitutional formats of immediate production and knowledge exchange and
the re-appropriation of knowledge products from the recently marginal
institutional sphere (big exhibitions, dance centres, networks etc.).
The 1990s brought a large and unrepresented area to the cultural
market of Western Europe – Eastern Europe. The real influence of the
breakthrough of this new space (but also of art and knowledge) on the
transformation of the artistic market and the institutions of the West still
hasn’t been completely articulated. A number of Western institutions and
festivals joined networks for the production and presentation of Eastern
European art. That was helped by all these countries joining the EU.
Suspicious of Eastern European art dealers, they found partners among the
old institutional theatres and co-produced a number of younger authors who
were more than willing to present the Eastern Europe in Kusturica’s images
of weddings, drinking, sentiments and Slavic spirit even there where there
were no Slavs involved. The only thing that those collaborations left behind
was the renewed strength of the old theatre structures or renegade
institutional producers who produced these new stars through their private
agencies.
While the art of so-called New Europe, longing to be presented, selfidentified with the imagery of Eastern Europe, the art institutions of the
West formed the basis for the new politization of artists’ real production and
While the art of
so-called New Europe
self-identified with
the imagery of Eastern
Europe, the art
institutions of the
West formed the basis
for the new politization of artists’ real
production and their
participation in the
market.
Looking Backwards
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
their participation in the market. Let us understand here the politization of
the work as a momentum of thought that became the primary source of the
production of (artistic) goods.
That artistic “subsumption into the sphere of labour of what had
hitherto belonged to political action” (Virno) or the politization of the art
work was the most obvious in dance, electronic music and visual culture –
artistic fields that in the 1990s were on the margins of Western
representationism.
Art institutions of the West quickly reoriented themselves towards the
nominal integration of new artistic powers and, unconsciously replicating
post-Fordist principles of production, invited artists over for an intervention
in, and production of, new collaborations. The position of the artistic director
and the programming director of the institution, who was redistributing the
artistic work, functions and activities within the existing resources, was
transformed through the appropriation of the artistic knowledge. The new
function, curator in English (already well known in the context of visual arts),
came out of the redefinition of the programmers’ relationship towards the
presence of other people (by other people I mean: artists, audiences,
communities) and this strategy of collaboration gained a new quality –
invention.
So, while the new Eastern European sector was exhausting its
imagination imitating Western institutional models from the 1980s (cultural
centres, low budget co-production structures, specialized centres, museums
of contemporary art), new models of collaboration were flourishing within
Western institutions. Communication values, participation in the language
and the production of knowledge (artistic research) didn’t gain financial
recognition as well; the underdeveloped economy of new artistic and
collaborative practices remains poor in comparison with the well-serviced
economies of artistic production in conventional production schemes.
Therefore, even though institutions are capable of co-opting even the most
progressive formats of political thinking, they never reflect the changes in
their own logical whole because they are not open to the scope of the
institutional field; they buy per piece and don’t participate in the space of the
articulation of change, in the public sphere that is not led by the state. The role
of those cultural institutions that are appropriating research and production
guided by intellectual outreach, repeats the pattern left over from the
Enlightenment – it reproduces the idea of the aesthetic state hiding the
"depth and sophistication of the politics of subjectivation that is enshrined
within this evolving program of aesthetic education." (Brian Holmes: Games,
Corporations & Distant Constellations).
But the real meeting of the art of East and West, North and South, big
and small or the included and the incommunicados happens in the public
sphere that is not led by the state, in the series of events, collaborations and
new economies that were often developed in collaboration with the
institutions, but that have grown out of the newly produced situations and
not out of the formats of presentation. These situations have grown out of
parasitic economies of exchange between artists, parallel inscriptions in
history, peer-to-peer economies and knowledge exchange, tactical
networking and the institutionalization of the local but also non-identitarian
praxis. The new platforms and forums of the disparate combination of
individual artists and curators, projects, institutions, independent
organizations, economic structures, fractions of networks, parts of the civil,
private and public sector, were all based on heterogeneous interests,
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Looking Backwards
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
investments and practices. Viewed in totality, they combine possible
multiplicity, producing a new situation of togetherness.
Continuing our travels
Staying with a colleague in Hamburg on Reeperbahn Strasse; yet another day
in Kampnagel where we already felt comfortable (I met Hannah Hurtzig in
Zagreb at the IETM meeting afterwards and at that time she already knew
that she needed to leave Kampnagel. Afer she left, Kampnagel probably
abandoned its buildings and left them to the regional cultural centre, and
that is how it still is today).
The next stop was The Mickery. Unfortunately, it was already clear that
this was its final year. The Mickery wasn’t a new institution, but it remained
the phantom of the new.
Ritsaert ten Cate with a bottle of Jenever and a bunch of video tapes
that we watched until early morning – the short history of the avant-garde
theatre in 20 VHS tapes. Enough to realize how important it is to have an
office. In fact, enough to take having an office way too seriously during the
next 20 self-managing years.
Kaaitheater. This was supposed to be the icing on the cake – the desire
of every ambitious young dramaturge. Unfortunately, the assistant told us
that Hugo De Greef and Marianne Van Kerkhoven had just passed by us on
their way out. She couldn’t believe we didn’t recognize them (?!?). With the
coming years, I realized that my repeated process of introducing myself or
being introduced to the Flemish was a potential hobby: Jan Fabre – seven
times; Marianne Van Kerkhoven four; Hugo de Greef three; Jan Lauwers
three... I expect I will be introduced to some of them at least a couple of more
times.
Leaving for Amsterdam on the final train, arriving at a late hour,
wandering around Amsterdam with luggage, being awake in the Hilton lobby
with a cup of coffee, going to the Netherlands Theatre Institute, met no one,
barely saw anything, went back.
Speculation 2
This spring in Graz, Hannah asked another interesting question: “When did
we start using the notion of curator in the performing arts?”
It is interesting that the use of that notion coincides with the functional
disciplining of the position of the dramaturge in the framework of an open
type of institution. In the last two decades, a number of places where one
could study dramaturgy were opened.
At the same time, paradoxically, the number of working dramaturges in
theatres was reduced and dramaturges aren’t employed by the drama
theatre any longer, neither within the programming department, nor for the
practical aspects of dealing with the text. Yet the number of dramaturges
who are active in the non-institutional production and various nondisciplinary jobs in programming of the institutions of the open type has
risen. Dramaturges have taken over some more responsibility for the various
side activities, together with editorial work and collaboration with chosen
artists, such as research, studio work, laboratoriums, discussions, and
symposiums... The curatorial function paradoxically grows out of the new
Looking Backwards
Goran Sergej Pristaš
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
cycle of attempting to discipline the dramaturgical function towards a
structuring of the program of various forms and formats. It also develops as
a liberating functionalization of the directing authority of the artistic
manager, programmer, or the artistic director, turning all of these roles into a
figure that positions itself not only within the institution but also in
opposition with the institution, defining its relationship with the institution
as a certain temporality. As a result, the institution is represented as a fluid
space, and the curator subjectifies herself/himself through differentiation. So
it is not surprising that curators are defining themselves more and more,
thanks to the experiences they have in cultural management, either in an
organization or through formal dramaturgical education, while the
dramaturge as a function disappears from the management scene.
I personally believe that this position does not follow from the
redefinition of the position of the networked programmer in the 1980s which
was primarily developmental. The curatorial function is mainly interventionist
although it is often presented as creative and mediatory. While the function
of a programmer was to service an institution, the curatorial function is
communicatory, questioning the institutional frameworks, but also servicing
the public. The focus of the curator has less to do with the relationship with
the organisation, than with communication and interpretation. So it is
symptomatic, however superficial, that criticism of curatorial politics is
directed against the complexity of the program and illustrational
programming segments (performances, lectures, projections, labs...) which
resulted in the proliferation of performances based on one idea and the
dictum of comprehensibility. In that sense, the curatorial position simulates
the position of the curator in visual culture, but the key difference is the
economy of these two fields. The curator in the field of performance rarely
operates with large budgets, media visibility and private capital, which is the
case in visual arts. Performing arts have a completely different dynamic of
production and working conditions in comparison with the field of visual
culture. That means that the literal translation of curatorial policies in the
field of performing arts often results in the reduction of production budgets.
The proof of that is the reduction of co-productions, the investment in the
less known or emerging artists and the multiple presentations of the work of
the artist that are not coming out of the production centres (Berlin, Bruxelles,
Paris in the metaphorical sense etc.)
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and the glossary has changed too:
collaboration
platform
change of perspective
curator
visibility, integration, understanding
knowledge production
interdisciplinary practice.
35
While the function of a
programmer was to
service an institution,
the curatorial function
is communicatory,
questioning the institutional frameworks,
but also servicing the
public.
36
Outdoor Stage,
Čakovec, Croatia
Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
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38
Shuffling
the Deck,
Shifting
Positions
Curating
as environmentalism
Elke Van Campenhout
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Elke Van Campenhout
To find a frame, a timing or a situation within which
suggestions of others can be realized.
Thomas Plischke
I
1.
n this text I would like to focus on a particular form
of curatorship: a practice that grew out of (and in
opposition to) the ‘new’ style of programming of
the 1980s institutions. An attitude in thinking about
curating in which the role of the programmer and
the role of the artist start to intertwine. I’d like to
talk about a curatorship that tries to redefine the
boundaries put up by the institutions that were
built for the production modes and logic of a generation of
autonomous artists, a rethinking of the role of the institution
by introducing the notions of vulnerability, risk and
imperfection into the programming idiom, and a translation
of the ‘relational esthetics’ of the visual arts towards a more
ecological phrasing of the time and space shared by the
performers, ‘spect-actors’, public members and the resisting
(art)objects they encounter.
An important experience for me in my role of spectator,
and a starting point for this ramble through the focus points
of my memory, was the 10-day performance event BDC/
Thomas Plischke and Friends organized in 2001 in the
temporary site of the Beursschouwburg in Brussels (which
was at that point being renovated): the BSBbis. Talking to
then dance programmer Carine Meulders, it became clear to
me that this project already introduced a lot of elements that
in the next 10 years would become important tools in
rethinking the performing arts notions of curatorship and
the role of the artist/curator, as well as for the re-creation of
the institution by introducing derogatory practices within its
territory (another use of space, time, and the distinction
between performers and audience members), and another
way of thinking the social body of participants of the
environment created by (but not limited to) the programmed
events.
Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Elke Van Campenhout
Basically BDC/Thomas Plischke & Friends started out as
an idea to show two of the BDC performances (Affects and
(Re)SORT), while at the same time creating a completely new
environment of parallel performances, workshops, discourse
sessions, concerts, films and informal encounters.
Collaborators to these projects were artists such as Mårten
Spångberg, Hygiene Heute, Alice Chauchat, Davis Freeman,
Lilia Mestre. There was a theoretical programme with
workshops organized by Jeroen Peeters and Steven De Belder
with contributions from Gerald Siegmund, Jan Ritsema,
Stefanie Wenner, Kattrin Deufert etc. The project ran for 10
days, 24 hours a day, and invited both artists and audience
members to share the space not only for the performances
and workshops, but also to spend the time in-between
together, even spending the night at the venue, maximalizing
the potential of the unexpected, of the informal encounter,
of experiencing the changing atmosphere of the space-atwork/at-leisure.
An important factor in this project was the fact that it
was set up initially without a definite space in mind: the
regular Beursschouwburg was under reconstruction at the
time, and the theatre had not yet found another location, nor
was it clear if another theatre space was exactly what the
artistic team needed at that point. In that sense, the project
that was being developed also to an important degree
changed the thinking about the institution-in-transition, and
the project location BSBbis (in a relatively eerie part of
Brussels) also became the temporary location for the
adventurous working of the Beursschouwburg in the years
before their move back to the renovated theatre in the
centre. Two timings in this sense were developing
simultaneously: the creation of the project, and the search
for a location. Both logics became intertwined on the
crossroads of the need for mobility and flexibility of the
programme and its realization.
What was important in the realization of this project
was the coming together of different social bodies: the first
24-hour group of 60 artists, opening up to a wider group of
participants for the workshops and discourse sessions and
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
39
then to the ‘regular’ public around performance time. What
was interesting in the thinking about the role of the curator
in this case was the fact that Thomas Plischke himself spent
most of the ‘public’ moments together with Kattrin Deufert
in a reenactment of Andy Warhol’s Sleep in a bed in the café,
preferring the nightly hours for experiencing the ‘other’ space
of the BSBbis, another kind of performativity visible only to
the night watcher or another sleepless soul. The traditional
‘visibility’ of the curator (as we know it from the classical
view on curatorship in the visual arts, where the curation, in
itself an artistic gesture, is signed and recognized) was
broken up by the curator giving up his central function, only
shaping the timing and the situation of the event, but not
the content frame that had to be filled. In other words: the
curation was not so much about creating an agenda for
discussion but in negotiating the format of the agenda in the
first place.
What these 10 days also produced was the rethinking of
the value of the moment through blurring the boundaries
between ‘performance’ and ‘daily life’, between social rituals
and performative work, between production time and
performance time.
As Thomas Plischke himself said (in an interview with
Rudi Laermans, Carine Meulders and Kattrin Deufert): “I think
that every collaboration has its time and that you learn
throughout the collaboration to discover its mechanics.”
Although he was talking about BDC in this quote and not
specifically about the BDC-event, this is an important
reference point in understanding the mechanics of the kind
of curatorship that would be developed more intensely in the
years to come. The curatorship being not only about bringing
together works of art, creating different resonances and
echoes, rethinking one work through the other, thinking
about differences and repetitions, but also about creating
openings and weaknesses in the curating, allowing for
vulnerability and ‘empty moments’ to be fully part of the
experience. The importance of this stance on curatorship is
that it takes a clear distance from the power and control
strategies of the regular performing arts field, allowing risk
In other words: the curation was not so much about creating
an agenda for discussion but in negotiating the format of
the agenda in the first place.
ajickarF
40
Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Elke Van Campenhout
to enter into the project set-up, and putting into question
not only the authorship of the artist/curator, but also the
market value of the artistic product.
Thomas Plischke again: “The utopia probably doesn’t
consist of creating a temporary community or communitas.
Rather it shows that if we gather for a performance, every
momentary created element is part of the social or
communicative system that we set up together. If you look
at it from the point of view of Luhmann’s system theory you
know that there are only these momentary elements and not
also something like an overall system. The possibility of
failure, vulnerability, is there when you no longer know when
you will lose your ground. That is what is important to me: to
introduce the conviction that the system for which the
public pays and that in fact is created by the performers and
the public together, at the same time is not there at all.”
The BSB bis event had a follow-up in the arts centre
Vooruit in Ghent in 2002, invited by Barbara Raes: b-visible, a
72-hour event, curated by Thomas Plischke, Kattrin Deufert
and Jeroen Peeters. This time the project had the theoretical
content-focus of queerness and visibility and inspired a
different kind of working and curating within the institution:
the ‘intensification’ of performance events, transdisciplinary
programming and parcours work, folding open the building
and showing it in different states of living and working
became one of the driving forces of the artistic programming
team of Vooruit in the years to come.
2.
Curating as institutional
prosthesis and critique
To understand this kind of curating and even the
‘institutionalization’ of these forms of curatorship, we have
to take a look at the scene as it was at that point. The 1980s
had produced arts centres and later on subsidized work
spaces for artistic production and research, with a new surge
of artists entering the scene, with the need for rethinking the
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
disciplinary boundaries, and the cry for a more ‘holistic’ way
of thinking about arts practice and discourse development,
these institutions proved not always to be the ideal spaces
for rethinking production parameters and disciplinary
boundaries. A lot of these spaces by the beginning of the
new millennium had found their specific ways of cyclic
programming, working with yearly program books and
subscriptions. For the new generations of artists that no
longer (wanted to) fit the institutional agendas, it was
important to find new formats of working. On the other
hand, another generation of programmers also wanted to
find a way of breaking open the institutional formatting to
once again free the space for the artists. It is in that middle
field, in this open space, that the programmer and the artist/
curator found each other: in the want of the programmer to
challenge the ways of the system, and in the need of the
artist to escape the programming logic of the subsidiary
system (first you get a residency in a workspace, then you
get (not) picked up by one of the bigger arts centres, etc...).
The need to break out of this production logic produced a
kind of solidarity movement within the artist community
which translated itself into different artist initiatives that in
their own ways tried to break open the logic of the
performing arts market. An example of this is Praticable, an
initiative created in 2005 by Alice Chauchat, Frédéric de Carlo,
Frédéric Gies, Isabelle Schad and Odile Seitz, as an answer to
the programmer’s demands. The ‘open collective’ shares
nothing but body practices, out of which each member can
create his/her own work, in collaboration or not with other
Praticable members. But the interesting part is that
whenever one of them is programmed, they program one of
their colleagues as a 20-minute opening programme to their
own show. The curatorial aspect here has nothing to do with
content, nor with a specific kind of aesthetics, but everything
with reclaiming the fundaments of the production
mechanisms of the performance scene.
In Belgium, these curatorial initiatives rarely thrive
outside of the institutional framework. More often than not
we could speak about a curatorial redistribution of the
The radical change in the position of the spectator is one
of attitude, precisely that he leaves behind his position and
starts looking for a connection, that he inscribes himself
in the bigger story.
institutional: the artist/curator claims his/her position within
one (or more) arts house(s), and then re-distributes the
means their position produces with a larger number of
networked artists and thinkers. It is a way of working that is
sustained by for example a workspace like nadine in Brussels,
which ‘lends’ its house and (part of its) budget for six months
to an artist/curator that will in these months open up their
working to other artists, opening up for public moments
every now and then and to varying groups of interested,
participating or involved ‘spect-actors’.
Talking to artists these last years, the remark that
always comes back is that they want to ‘escape’ the
institutional logic that renders them passive, that makes
them wait in line to be ‘picked up’, be ‘chosen’, to go through
all the predescribed steps to become a recognized artist. Not
only do a lot of them no longer aspire to this notion of ‘the
artist’, since they are involved in rewriting the rules for
artistic authorship in complex ways of collaborative and/or
communal practice that defy the programming system, but
they also want to get rid of the frustrating passivity they find
themselves in when confronted with the ways of the
subsidiary system. Especially since this system seems to be
crumbling down a bit more every year.
In that sense the curatorial position regains its good old
etymology of hospitality, of ‘taking care’ of the networked
community. But on the other hand it also creates a new
paradigm for the re-distributer, the artist/curator who is at
the same time claiming his vulnerability by offering an empty
frame for working by sending out an (open) invitation to the
scene, and defending his position as the creator of this frame
as an art work in itself. It would bring us too far to analyze all
the different possible models of re-distribution here, or to
define the criteria for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ positioning between the
institution and the independent field. But it is certain that in
every one of these projects the boundaries are put into
question again, in the best cases producing a sense of
renewal within the institution, as well as in the artistic and
curatorial practices of all the participants.
41
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
3.
Frakcija
Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Elke Van Campenhout
What we see happening in the performance scene is thus a
transition from curating the artists, over curating the art
works (as it happened in the two Klapstuk festivals for
contemporary dance, curated by Jerôme Bel in 2003 and
2005, and claimed by him as his ‘art work’ in a newspaper
interview) to the curation of a space, of a social body, shared
by artists, audience members, and ‘art objects’. It is a space
that demands time and attention for a sense of belonging
(be it critical or engaged, active or passive) to grow, that
bridges the all-too-easily claimed positions of the artist,
programmer, spectator or critic. An extraordinary example of
this kind of curating was achieved by André Lepecki in his
two In-Transit festivals in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in
Berlin. Although in this case his curatorship had a clear
discourse stamp – coloured by (neo)post-colonial
performance themes, and in that sense certainly was more
than an empty box for gathering and exchange – his
transformation of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, with its
heavy institutional frame, into an open house for discussion
(opening up out of the Lab sessions – the first year assisted
by Brian Massumi and Erin Manning, the second year selforganized – interacting through public discussions, entering
into the fabric of the bar discussions) was a beautiful
example of how even within the institution the rules can be
bent in such a way as to produce a subtly different common
ground to work on. Artists and theoreticians, lab students
and critics sharing the same space for a prolonged period of
time, for discussions, concerts, parties, eating in the garden,
and working, broke the frame of the ‘festival’ as consumerist
high-point of the cultural year, and produced a working
space that didn’t fall into the trap of easily created critical
oppositions. Instead what appeared was a generous
atmosphere for engaged thinking and working, always
bumping into the prickly theme of the festival’s
programming: the resistance of the object.
In-Transit was an example of an ‘environmentalist’
approach to curation, a careful ecological balancing exercise
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Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Elke Van Campenhout
between given elements, the creation of a frame for the
formation of a social body in constant transformation, and
the channels for the inspiration and flow of knowledge to
find its way to the different sub-groups of interests
participating in the festival.
What prevented this festival from getting trapped in
the festivalitis context (unlike, for example, the Trance
festival organized by HAU a couple of years ago) was its
attitude, its openness instituted by the curatorial
organization of space and time, by the distribution of
proximity and accessibility of the different participants
groups, by the care for the food, the library, the focuses of
attention. In that way the difference between working and
watching, between practicing theory and performance,
between participants and audience members was
minimalized, without giving up on the challenge, the
invitation for positioning yourself within the given
parameters. Here, as in the BDC example, the space for the
arts was stretched out into the surrounding park, the
cafeteria, the hallways and the metro back to the hotel.
4.
In short, in this text I speak about a very specific
understanding of curatorship: a shared curatorship, putting
into question the authorial roles and introducing new
potentials for exchange and sharing of (artistic) material, a
curatorship that extends the invitation to rethink the ecology
of the performing arts system from within, without
introducing definite new ideological standpoints or stubborn
critical certainties. A curatorship not so much as a statement
but as a redistribution of power that makes us rethink the
fabric of our social bodies and belonging. A curating of the
now, in the moment of its unfolding.
I like the definition Nigel Thrift gives for the rethinking
of a political attitude in his Non-representational theory: “a
potentiality that is brought into being only as it acts or exists
in the interstices of interaction”.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
If this is so, the whole idea of curating is no longer
based on fixed points in space, performances in venues. The
real curating is the non-curated part of the interstices, of the
places in-between, of the potential of the situation for
changing one’s attitude, one’s mind or one’s sense of
belonging. The curatorial practice in that sense opens up
cracks in the system in the space, where things can happen
that were neither programmed nor foreseeable. Encounters
between people, between people and objects, architecture,
history, thoughts and ideas roaming the space that can be
picked up by anyone, rephrased and relaunched in another
conversation, left as a trace for someone else to pick up,
etcetera. Environmentalism is about allowing for that to
happen.
In a space like that, the role of the curator and the artist
becomes interchangeable, as does the role of the spectator.
Since the curatorial attitude is one of creating a space in
which anyone could feel empowered to start creating or
changing it by their input, the spectator is confronted with a
serious challenge here, albeit possibly in the guise of a
somewhat obscure invitation. It is an invitation that allows
them to become affected by the circumstances, to actively
open up to this potential change, not necessarily by actively
getting out there, but by opening up their perspectives on
what might happen. It is this oscillating promise that creates
the space and the social body within it. This kind of unspoken
promise that something is going on, connecting all elements
within the given parameters, rendering palpable the intuition
that any kind of change happening within it also creates a
change in the whole of the constellation.
The radical change in the position of the spectator is
one of attitude, precisely that he leaves behind his position
and starts looking for a connection, that he inscribes himself
in the bigger story that is being written, not so much for him,
but with him. Although this might sound a bit like an ideal
situation, with the right set-up of time and space, allowing
for gaps and interstices, and (very importantly) including the
whole organizational team in adapting and communicating
this attitude, it has proven itself to be possible.
A curatorship not as a statement but as a redistribution of
power that makes us rething the fabric of our social bodies
and belongings. A curating of the now, in the moment of its
unfolding.
At that point curatorial politics are no longer about
superficially provoking an (un)wanted interactive dynamic
between spectators and performers, but about allowing
them to rethink their role in the whole. Whatever is being
said or done in that space is no longer an abstract message
sent out to an abstract receiver, but becomes a piece of
constantly changing information, that passes through every
individual present in a personal, although nonautobiographical, way. It is for him to pick it up or leave it
stranding, to make a choice or give over to the flow, to be
critical, enthusiastic, a glitch in the circulation, or a conductor
or the environmental energy. But he will know that whatever
position he chooses to take on will in some way change the
outlook of the constellation.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
43
Frakcija
Shuffling the Deck, Shifting Positions
Elke Van Campenhout
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“Diaghilev is the most important curator of the 20th century”
An Interview with exhibition maker Hans Ulrich Obrist
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
“Diaghilev is the
most important
curator of the 20th
century”
An Interview with exhibition maker Hans Ulrich Obrist
T
he concept of the curator
is becoming more and
more influential within
the performing arts. You
were one of the people
that made this term
popular in visual arts –
but your work as curator
is not restricted to that.
My big curatorial inspiration has always been
Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian impresario of
the Ballets Russes. I think he is the most
important curator of the 20th century. He
brought together art, choreography, music…
Stravinsky, Picasso, Braque, Natalia
Goncharova… the greatest artists,
composers, dancers and choreographers of
his time. That is the idea of completely transdisciplinary curating, which I arrived at out of
a contemporary necessity – but was also
historically inspired.
When I started to curate visual arts in
the early nineties, it was out of friendship
and conversations with artists that I felt it
was also time to expand the notion of
curating itself. This process finally led me to
the curating of architecture, curating of
sound, curating of literature – and last but
not least also to the curating of time in the
context of theatre and opera. Art can travel
in different ways. It can travel through
objects – it can travel over centuries. It can
also travel through scores, like music. And
since during the nineties many artists were
working with the notion of time, Philippe
Parreno and I wanted to bring them together
to a time based group show. That was what
happened with “Il Tempo del Postino” in
2007.
How did you approach this idea of timebased curating in “Il Tempo del Postino”?
It was an unrealised project for a long time,
because we couldn’t find a space or
institution to do it. It could have happened in
lots of different contexts – but we couldn’t
find an opera that would produce it, we
couldn’t find a theatre, we couldn’t find a
museum. It seems that there are institutions
missing for such grand interdisciplinary
endeavours. Then the Manchester
International Festival was founded, and the
director Alex Poots invited me to realise our
unrealised project.
Out of conversations with artists from
different contexts but mostly out of our own
generation like Liam Gillick, Tino Seghal,
Tacita Dean, Carsten Höller, Olafur Eliasson,
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and others we
developed a score for the evening. The idea
was that it could be replayed – and later it
actually was.
It was a very polyphonic situation.
Olafur Eliasson said: “There is so much going
on here!” And indeed I think the potential
might not have been where we expected it,
in the sense that there was a group of artists
that put together a sequence of situations
under our guidance – it was more a question
of what happened without being planned.
You talk about a score and another
exhibition of yours was called “The rule of
the game” – would you say performing arts
are less easy to control? You can set up as
many rules as you want – they might not be
obeyed.
The question of control of course is
interesting – you need to keep the show
together, but you also need to question your
own control. Otherwise it becomes a dead
situation. In order to make an exhibition
organic, you need to find the right mix
between determinacy and in-determinacy.
The right mix between an exhibition that is
curated and organised and self-curated and
self-organised so that the artworks and the
show can emerge. The French use the word
commissaire, which really is the curator as a
policeman – I have always questioned that
concept: I rather think it is important to
think how we can inject self-organisation.
Rules are also there to be shifted and
changed.
It seems that the interest of the visual in
performing arts is growing: Trisha Brown
was presented at the last Documenta, Meg
Stuart and Tim Etchells at the Manifesta two
years ago…
… an even earlier beginning was Tom
Stromberg programming “Theaterskizzen” at
Catherine David’s Documenta X. That was
incredibly interesting at that time and
inspiring also to me as well as the projects
Hortensia Völckers curated in Vienna and
Hamburg preceding this.
But did it start something? Did something
grow out of these encounters?
45
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Things are not linear, they are not picked up
the next day. But they sink in. With
exhibitions you always can only plant seeds.
With “Tempo del Postino” we planted such a
seed. Maybe in five or ten years there will be
a young artist that has been triggered by
that. These projects might have an
immediate effect but they also have a longterm effect. We can clearly observe an
increased interest, a desire of artists for
unmediated experiences and direct
performance. By this I mean where the
viewer does not receive the exhibition in a
prescriptive, dogmatic way, through the
voice of the curator or of the artists, but truly
experiences the art in all its complexity.
How do such unmediated art forms change
the job of the curator? Can they be curated
at all?
There are a lot of possibilities to curate it. We
found one possible rule of the game with
“Tempo del Postino”. There is a huge
potential. We will see in the next couple of
years a lot of interesting approaches… To
give you another example: We invited Marina
Abramović to curate a group show about
endurance in performance. She worked with
a group of younger artists and the whole
Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester was
emptied completely for several weeks. The
performance took over the entire institution.
When you talk about seeds: your project
“Laboratorium” (together with Barbara
Vanderlinden) had a very big influence on
contemporary dance. Labs and research
projects have very much influenced the last
ten years in advanced performing arts
institutions. Meanwhile laboratories and
research almost seems to have replaced the
fetish of the product.
It is interesting you would mention
“Laboratorium” because it was the first time I
connected with the world of dance – there
was Xavier Le Roy and there was Meg Stuart.
The show took place all over the city of
Antwerp as a trans-disciplinary project in
which one could explore very different
“
Frakcija
“Diaghilev is the most important curator of the 20th century”
An Interview with exhibition maker Hans Ulrich Obrist
You need to find
the right mix
between determinacy
and in-determinacy.
The right mix between
curated and organised
and self-curated and
self-organised.
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46
“
My work has to
be useful. It is
totally pragmatic. If I
bring together people
from different
disciplines, it helps
everybody. It motivates people. It produces
unexpected results.
“Diaghilev is the most important curator of the 20th century”
An Interview with exhibition maker Hans Ulrich Obrist
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
laboratories of scientists and the very
different studios of artists: The limits and
possibilities of the places where art and
science are produced. Throughout the city
we had active labs where experiments were
taking place. It was a very dispersed
situation… There were the language
laboratories and the laboratory of doubt by
Carsten Höller. The most influential on dance
and theatre was perhaps the “Theatre of
Proof” by Bruno Latour. He started from the
idea that it is very difficult to differentiate
between what happens in the laboratory and
what happens outside in nature and society
– in some way we all work in laboratories: If
we don’t experiment ourselves then we are
used by others for their experiments: climate
change, food change, contagious diseases,
urbanism, psychology and demography –
everywhere scientists, engineers, statisticians
who assemble data and put out their
hypothesises, establish theories. So Latour
curated a whole series of public
demonstrations. For example, he restaged
Pasteur’s famous experiment… And that
leads to Xavier Le Roy as a choreographer
who studied molecular biology and
presented in Product of Circumstances the
body as a matter of social and cultural
structures and as a practice of absolute
necessity. The autobiographic exposé
became the project. And Meg Stuart’s
Highway functioned as a choreography
laboratory…
It was a cohabitation of art forms. And
it led to other projects: for example, a couple
of years later we invited Jérôme Bel to the
Lyon Biennale. For him it was the first time
he worked in an exhibition. For me the
medium of the exhibition is where it all can
come together, where we can produce reality
together. The visual art world is a very good
place right now, where all the disciplines can
meet.
dematerialised exhibitions; there are
exhibitions that come to the home of the
spectator like with the “Museum in progress”
which happened in a daily newspaper. There
are all kinds of possibilities, time-based,
space-based, dematerialised…
I am at home in the visual art world and
I am very happy there because within this
world I can bring together all these things. If
I want to understand what the effective
forces in art are, I need to understand also
what is happening in dance, in music, in
literature. For me this is not a matter of
theory, it is a practice. I don’t think about
these things theoretically, I just observe
what is productive. My work has to be useful.
It is totally pragmatic. But I realized: If I bring
together people from different disciplines, it
helps everybody. It motivates people. It
produces unexpected results.
But you would call all these different projects
for different disciplines still exhibitions?
Yes, yes – I am an exhibition maker and the
exhibition is my medium. We expanded the
field of the exhibition: I do exhibitions in a
museum, but I also go beyond the
boundaries of the museum space. There are
In performing arts there seems to be some
scepticism by artists towards the term and
changing function of the curator: That there
is too much space taken, that the role of the
curator becomes too important, that there is
too much framework…
My notion of curating always was not to
stand in the way. I believe the curator is a
catalyst that has to be able to disappear.
Alighiero Boetti told me when I was just
beginning to work as a curator not to
squeeze art into my predetermined scheme,
but to start to look around and see what
projects artists have and try to make them
happen, to produce them as realities.
I do nothing, which is not in absolute
agreement with the artist, and I would never
impose a theme or a frame that does not
come from the artists themselves. The rule
of the game has to come from the artists. I
don’t believe in an authoritarian curator. I
believe in the curator as an accomplice. So I
have never had that problem that artists feel
that I am somehow invasive or intrusive.
Artists don’t like it if their work is exploited.
They don’t like it when a curator uses their
work to illustrate a thesis. And these are
usually not interesting exhibitions anyway. If
you have a theory and want to illustrate it,
better write a book.
Would you be interested to not only bring
performing artists into the world of visual
art but also to curate within their frames?
There have been some first encounters – last
year, for example, Georges Delnon, the
director of the theatre in Basel, where we
restaged “Tempo del Postino” in 2009 in
coproduction with Art Basel and the Beyerler
Foundation, invited me to curate something
new. And while thinking about it, we realized
that one thing we have in the art world and
which is not so common in the world of
performing arts is the way books are part of
our work. In the art world we are obsessed
with books. Everything we do includes
publishing a book. Whereas I am often
astonished that in performing arts you have
great artists, but there has barely been a
book published on their work. There is a huge
discrepancy in terms of literature. So we
came up with the idea to curate a book, an
artist book and Georges suggested the book
could also be the theatre program. So we
invited Hans-Peter Feldmann, the legendary
artist. For me that was a first modest step of
what could happen in this context.
You also developed the idea of an interview
marathon for Theater der Welt in 2005…
… where I was invited by the late Marie
Zimmermann and the theatre curator
Christine Peters. When they asked me to do
something, after thinking about it for quite a
long time, I proposed to put my interview
project on stage as a durational presentation.
This is the work where I engage most in a live
presence – since most of the time the
curator disappears and isn’t on stage. So we
programmed a 24-hour-marathon. And since
then I have done these marathons all over
the world and also developed different ones,
many happened at the Serpentine Gallery:
There was an interview marathon, an
experiment marathon, a manifesto
marathon, a poetry marathon and this year
there will be a maps marathon. All these
marathons have happened since then in the
art world – but I would never have invented
them if I had not been invited by a theatre
festival.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Whenever we get out of our routine, we
can invent things. So I hope that when I
invite practitioners from other fields into the
art world that something similar happens.
For example, when I first invited
architects into the art world, they just
showed their maquettes – that’s what they
always do, they send their maquettes. But
when they came to see the exhibition, they
realized that this was a bit weird, because all
the artists were exposing experiences. So
suddenly the architects started to do
something totally different as well.
For me to invent a marathon in the
theatre world and then bring it back to the
art world helped me a lot in remapping my
practise. These other fields are contact
zones. That’s why I think it is so important to
have this trans-disciplinary way of working.
That is a way we can all learn from each
other.
So are you planning any other projects in the
field of performing arts at the moment?
I live in a kind of a post-planning condition. I
grew up as a kid in Switzerland reading a lot
of Robert Walser, going on a lot of walks. And
for me life is a kind of walk – with a lot of
chance encounters. It is very important to be
open. So I see my practise really as a flânerie,
mostly through the city, but lately also
sometimes through the countryside. As part
of this flânerie a lot of things are possible, but
it is difficult to predict. As Douglas Gordon
would say: It has only just begun.
Interview by Florian Malzacher, Tea Tupajić &
Petra Zanki
47
Frakcija
“Diaghilev is the most important curator of the 20th century”
An Interview with exhibition maker Hans Ulrich Obrist
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48
Ryogoku Kokugikan,
Tokyo
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Curating Performing Arts
49
Frakcija
Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
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50
Relations in Motion
Beatrice von Bismarck
Relations
in Motion
T
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
The curatorial
condition in
visual art
– and its
possibilities
for the
neighbouring
disciplines
he curatorial domain has
in the past few years evolved into an extremely popular and therefore all the
more fiercely debated cultural field of activity. Originally, the adjective derived from the term “curator”, which very generally denoted a manager, Beatrice von Bismarck
and specifically, in the field of art, one who
cared for the museum collections. According Translated from the German by Marina MIladinov
to its etymological meaning, which goes back
to the Latin verb “curare” = “to care for”, the
curator was responsible for collecting, arranging, protecting, and presenting the objects that were preserved at an art
institution. The professional profile began evolving in the late 18th century,
with the development of museums and galleries, and it crystallized after
1945, as a result of the rapidly increasing number of collecting and exhibiting
art institutions, as well as the great expansion of the art market. This
professionalization and differentiation in the field of art allowed the term
“curator” to become a semantically and hierarchically structured word for a
profession.
In the late 20th and early 21st century, the increased global mobility of
people, information, and objects, the greater significance of culture for the
economic development of regions, and a larger social demand for creative
potentials extended to a variety of fields and caused a further increase of
place value. The consequence was, on the one hand, a celebrity cult growing
around the figure of the “curator”, which degraded artists and art critics to a
lower position in the field of art. Hand in hand with that development,
manifold relocations into the curatorial field from various artistic and
scholarly disciplines and professions were continually bringing the status of
curators, including their tasks and methods, into the focus of debate. For
whereas on the one hand curators were enthusiastically granted an
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
exceptionally “artist-like” status, considered as progress within the evolution
of the field, on the other hand it was precisely this similarity with the artists’
role that triggered some of the fiercest criticisms and animosities. Shifts in
perspective and accent, be it towards the definition of the work
accomplished, or towards the procedures used in organizing an audience, or
perhaps towards the attitude to consumerist behaviour, could easily turn
praise for the exceptional position of the curator into condemnation of that
very position as presumptuous and inappropriate. It is not only the social
privileges that are at stake here, but quite fundamentally the way and
efficiency of partaking in the processes of the creation of meaning. It is also
to this relation, eventually, that curators owe the fact that the demand of
competences for curatorial practices has evidently become more complex.
An independent form of cultural production and communication of meaning
has been established – primarily in the field of fine arts, but increasingly also
in the neighbouring disciplines, such as dance, theatre, film, literature, music,
and eventually also the natural sciences. The combination and interrelation
of objects, information, people, and spaces have shown themselves not only
as the constitutive tasks in conceiving, setting up, and presenting the
exhibitions, but also as key competences in social, political, and economic
relations marked by globalization and post-Fordism.
In its history and status, the curatorial field has been closely related to
the critical and self-reflexive orientation of artistic practice. It has particularly
continued two strands of development that have been present in the field of
art since the 1960s, which combine analytical dispute and social negotiation
processes through mutual encroachments between artists and presenters.
One strand consisted of conceptual art and institutional critique, which
shifted the focus from an object-based art to an ideationally argued art of a
relational and discursive disposition. One of the results of this approach was
that the actions, constellations, spaces, and contexts participating in the
production of meaning were transformed into a constitutive part of artistic
practice. It was in consequence of this that the appropriations of curatorial
activities – selecting, combining, arranging, presenting, and communicating
– have taken place. In that sense, for example, Marcel Broodthaers, Michael
Asher, and Daniel Buren, but also Bruce Nauman, Dan Graham, or Robert
Morris, extended their activities to selecting, assembling, arranging,
contextualizing, presenting, and communicating their own bodies, as well as
their own and other people’s artworks, public goods or private as well public
spaces. They set up their own directives as alternatives to the hitherto
common criteria of curatorial practice, displaying them as conventions that
could likewise be changed, and proclaimed the exhibition space as such to be
an integral part of artistic involvement. The decisions that were essential to
the visibility of art and its diverse forms, and the positions from which they
were made, as well as the criteria on which they were based and the included
modes of addressing, were at the disposal – of various agents – for shaping
and integrating them into the context-related procedures.
Parallel to that, in the course of rapidly intensifying activities in the field
of art in the 1960s and its differentiation, a new professional group was
formed: that of the free curators. In this context, Swiss curator Harald
Szeemann may be considered a prototype. He created for himself a position
in the field where exhibitions still consisted of art exhibits, but were as a
whole transformed into the “artworks” of their curator. The conflict that was
potentially there between agents that converged in the same field of tasks
was triggered over the claim of endowing meaning. Against the organizer of
51
Frakcija
Relations in Motion
Beatrice von Bismarck
Acts of gathering or
collecting, ordering,
presenting, and
mediating do not refer
merely only to objects
and information, but
also to people, places,
and contexts.
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52
Relations in Motion
Beatrice von Bismarck
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
thematic mega-exhibitions or the exhibition designer who had stylized
himself into a super-artist, the artists voiced the claim that they should be
allowed to decide themselves on the display and contextualization of their
artworks.
In the context of these developments, the curatorial field has gained its
independence with respect to the profession “curator”. From the task areas
that were originally tied to the curator’s institutionally anchored position in
art institutions, the curatorial field now primarily pushes mediation into the
foreground. With the goal of supplying an audience for cultural materials,
information, and procedures, and of making them receptible, the exhibition –
understood as a transdisciplinary and transprofessional space of appearance
– has become the central medium. In this context, curatorial activity no
longer has relevance only for the field of fine arts, but also for dance, theatre,
and film, or for the social, humanistic, and natural sciences. It liberates the
curators from the earlier invisibility of their own position and gives them a
free space that is otherwise rather unusual in institutions. Curatorial activity
reveals itself as a form of practice that can be used not only by curators, but
also by all other agents in the field of culture. Artists of various disciplines,
critics, gallery owners, dramaturges, and theoreticians of different
disciplinary backgrounds, not only from the established areas of art history
and cultural studies, but also from philosophy, for example, or from theory of
literature, film, theatre, and dance, from ethnology, political sciences, or
sociology – they all have the curatorial procedures at their disposal if they
want to participate in the processes of the meaning production.
Even if social and organizational competence remains the basic ability
of curators, their reputation is based to a considerable extent on their
symbolizing skills. There is almost no profession in the field of culture that
would define itself, at least as much as the curatorial activity does, as a
profession that produces contexts. Acts of gathering or collecting, ordering,
presenting, and mediating do not refer merely to objects of unusually varied
origin and to information, but also to people, places, and contexts, among
which they establish different references. The possibilities of these references
are numerous and can always be constructed anew. To that extent, what has
been assembled always remains in the state of “becoming”, while individual
curated elements acquire changeable and dynamic meanings during the
course of such linking processes. Procedures that create meaning, namely
those of selecting, assembling, arranging, and mediating, determine their
particular position in the current discourse.
These procedures acquire a special social relevance in their overlapping
with the post-Fordist conceptions of work, which the Italian social
philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato has gathered under the term “immaterial”.
According to him, with immaterial work the New Economy has shifted the
source of richness to conceptual activities. Knowledge and skills concerning
the handling of information and culture have replaced the processes of the
production of goods. In accordance with the evolution from an industrial
society to that of focusing on services, it is precisely the activities belonging
to the so-called secondary field of services, such as management,
organization, counselling, publication, and teaching, that have experienced
an over-proportional growth. It goes hand in hand with this change that the
differences between conception and performance, effort and creativity,
author and audience, have begun to dissolve in such working processes. As a
practice that encompasses organization, social networking, thematic
association, motivation, facilitation, and interpretative analysis, curatorial
What has established
itself is the figure of a
manager of
information, objects,
spaces, finances, and
people whose work
consists of creating
constellations and
whose product can be
described as ”set”.
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activity thereby connects social and self-technologies with one another in a
way that corresponds to the current demands set before the economic
management.
This contact and overlapping between different domains of activity and
social contexts is responsible for the fact that curatorial activity does not
give in to post-Fordist economic relations, but develops precisely critical
dimensions, since it has to a considerable extent become a place of
negotiation about conditions in the field of culture and economy. Curatorial
activity appears as a cultural practice that runs across and permeates
disciplines and professions, which is located somewhere between the fields
of research and art, as it is related to them both and shaped by their agents.
The fact that this has caused shifts of positions, processes of mutual
exchange and negotiation, as well as changes in traditional role patterns,
bears the risks of conflict yet at the same time indicates the special potential
of the curatorial field for questioning, altering, and restructuring the existing
aesthetical, social, and economic relations and conditions in the various fields
of cultural practice.
It is precisely at the contact points between art, theatre, and dance that
the performing arts have taken over the impulse-giving function of
questioning the prevailing conditions, since it is there that the curator’s
position, with its alleged power and distinguished status, has become a
subject of debate. Owing to the ever more blurred borderlines between the
roles of artists and curators, those of directors and dramaturges have also
become more permeable. First of all, in the figure of the curator – and his
role has always been relationally defined – the dissolution of a uniform
artistic subject and the liberation of artistic work into social, economic, and
discursive systems of reference have found its emblematic implementation.
It is structured per se as a multiple predicament, since the exhibiting artists
must be just as satisfied as the institution which is the potential supplier of
the work, contracts, and perhaps also money – and also (by no means less
important) the various possible circles of audience around the performance.
Whereas in the professionally differentiated conditions the curator’s position
is in the service of artistic implementation, as it aims at the best possible
form of presenting a previously adopted meaning of an exhibit, the blurred
borderlines between the curatorial and artistic fields of activity dissolve the
unity of artwork and the artistic subject alike. Moreover, they exemplify an
altered definition of artistic working processes, which goes further than
substituting the “author, artwork, and creation” triangle through that of
“producer, artwork, and production”, as has become evident at large in post1960s art. What has established itself here is the figure of a manager of
information, objects, spaces, finances, and people whose work consists of
creating constellations and whose manifold product can be described as a
“set”. The notion of set combines things that are – for a particular period of
time – considered as belonging together, with associations to the sphere of
theatre and film, in which it denotes the scene that has been put up in the
form of a stage or a film set. It is not by chance that the subject position that
constitutes itself here also shows similarities with the performing arts, as it
corresponds to the tasks, authority, and status of the director in more than
one respect: the curator’s activity essentially consists in staging the
conceptual requirements, supplied with the personal and material means
that he or she has organized. Stylized into an “author”, he or she becomes the
last bulwark against the loss of authority of the artistic subject, by restoring
its mythical functions.
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However, it must also be stated that the film director and the curator
are considerably different in one particular aspect, and that is that the latter
produces no permanent final product. Unlike films, which retain their
material substance after the performance or projection, which can be
collected and archived, turning them into marketable goods, a curatorial
product exists only for a limited period of time and then dissolves again into
its constitutive elements, which can only then become marketable. Rather
more similar to the theatre director, the curator creates a temporary
constellation in which spatially and temporally structured layers of meaning
compete with each other. To be sure, the exhibition practice is mostly
directed at a single presentation, a one-shot performance, whereas in theatre
and dance the performance is always one among many, previous or
subsequent performances. And yet, exhibitions which travel to different
places and situations, which are re-enacted as historical events or change
during the time they are open, take on aspects of multiple theatre
performances. Essentially, the analogy between theatre performance and art
exhibition opens up perspectives regarding the processual moment of
curatorial activity. Same as with theatre or dance, the phases of creation and
presentation come into the foreground, as well as the relational dynamics
during the development and performance.
The curatorial set that we are concerned with here must therefore be
understood as a spatial and temporal structure of processed relations. This
results in a historical strand of development that goes beyond the axes of
conceptual art and free curatorship, intertwining the performing arts and the
curatorial field even more tightly. What is meant here is focusing not so
much on the objects, information, people, and places that are connected in
the set, but rather on the relations between them. Thus, in 1969 Dan Graham
wrote an article, motivated by the areas of overlapping that he observed at
the time between the fields of fine arts, dance, and music, in which he dealt
with, among others, Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman, as well as Steve Reich
and Meredith Monk. The title of the essay was “Subject Matter” and in the
German edition of Graham’s writings it was translated as “Gegenstand”.
However, it could also be understood as the “Subjekt Materie” and then it
would be easier to follow Graham’s main line of argumentation, which
evolved along the line of relations between artists, observers, objects, and
spaces. Thereby, subjects and materials became the carriers of “information”, of impressions accumulated in the framework of interaction
taking place between them. Graham’s differentiations between various
artistic positions referred primarily to who or what was to be considered
responsible for such “in-formations” and what effect they had on other
participating elements. With such a definition, the presentation site has
become a field where positioning processes and changing relations are taking
place.
Nauman and Serra placed subjects and matters in various
constellations, with the aid of their own body, as well as different objects
such as neon tubes or lead; performances in which they both participated
also accentuated the process-oriented character of their constellating work.
Especially the performance that they presented in 1970 together with
Meredith Monk at the Santa Barbara Arts Festival demonstrates the
relational, process-oriented way of dealing with their own body: Monk,
completely in red, was moving for one hour across the stage, singing and
talking. Nauman lay down on the edge of the stage, rolled towards the stage
centre and back again, kept falling over the edge and climbing back on, and
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then started all over again. Eventually, Serra’s activities consisted in turning
and lifting: occasionally, at his will, he would lift Monk and set her down
again at another point of the stage. Thus, Monk, Nauman, and Serra
functioned as those who structured the continually changing relations to
one another, to the space, the architectural elements, and also the audience.
This historical strand, which places the accent on the constitution of
relations and their changeability, can be continued with the explicitly
curatorial approach that Peter Nadin adopted in 1978/79 together with
Christopher d’Arcangelo and Peter Lawson in New York, at 84 West
Broadway. On 9 November 1978, they launched an exhibition project with
physical structures that they installed themselves – handmade interventions
that the three artists performed at the same time for the lofts of other
commissioners and defined as artistic work, which had surpassed the mere
time invested. In a loose sequence – similar to the logic of a “cadavre esquis”
– Daniel Buren, Sean Scully, Jane Reynolds, Rhys Chatham, Lawrence Weiner,
Peter Fend, Dan Graham, Peter Nadin himself, as well as Louise Lawler,
contributed to the exhibition during the months that followed. An
advertising card documented the dates of the contributions that were added
one after the other, the last date being 30 May 1979. The suicide of
Christopher d’Arcangelo put an end to the project.
As a processual and relational concept that was only realized in the
process and moreover retained a moment of playfulness, the New York
exhibition of 1978/79 has had many followers to the present day, which have
referred to it more or less directly, such as the exhibitions “Followed and to
be followed” at Consortium, Dijon (1999) or “This is the Gallery and the
Gallery is Many Things” at Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2008). In this
context, one should especially mention the Berlin project “The work shown in
this space is a response to the existing conditions and/or work previously
shown within the space 3,” which took place in Spring 2000. Louise Lawler
created an invitation card for the exhibition opening in May 2000, which
named all the artists who had taken part in the project during the time
period from 4 January until 20 May, a project that had invited artists, just as
its predecessor in 1978 did, to intervene in the exhibition space one after
another, reacting to the earlier interventions by other participants. Besides
the contributors – Christopher Williams, Henrik Olesen, Lawrence Weiner,
Simon Starling, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Heimo Zobernig, Manfred
Pernice, and Isa Genzken – the card recorded the date and time of the event,
the duration of the project, the host institution, titles of the artistic
contributions, persons in charge of the photography and type design for the
card, and the exhibition title. In this way, Lawler supplied the information
that one would have expected of such an invitation regarding the
conventions in the exhibition milieu, yet at the same time gave visibility, with
a context-analytical perspectivization, to its institutional, personal, and
media-related intentions. For Lawler’s card was not only a carefully designed
invitation medium of “The work shown in this space […]”, but also an exhibit,
the final contribution in the series of ten interventions with the situation
given at the time, which took place at an irregular rhythm during somewhat
less than five months. Insofar that her name was the last on the list of artists,
her artwork – “This Card” – the one concluding the project. At a moment in
time when the exhibition was still open, it offered a retrospective, bearing
some similarity to the filmic trailer.
Lawler’s contribution has exemplified the relevance that the curatorial
activity in fine arts also has for dance, film, or theatre. With her invitation
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Rather more similar to
the theatre director,
the curator creates a
temporary constellation in which spacially
and temporally
structured layers of
meaning compete
with each other.
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card, she performed a sort of temporalization of the exhibition, which had as
its object both the “performance” as such and its self-reflexive, critical
potential. Firstly, various discourses overlap and condense in the status of
the invitation card between performative action and the representing object,
discourses that take place around the act of presentation as a cultural
practice. These bring the roles, positions, and tasks that are obviously more
differentiated in the fields of dance, theatre, and film when compared to the
fine arts, into a dynamic relation to one another. In the centre, there is the
relationship of artworks to their presentation. Their nature, which defines the
artwork as an aesthetic object, yet is no less conflict-laden for this reason,
raises questions about dependencies and manoeuvre spaces that go
together with presentation. Thereby a truly fundamental aspect is that of the
parts of the presentation act that have been internalized or externalized by
the artistic practice, which are brought into play in crossings between iconic
and deictic differences. The key point of the conflict, as one may describe it, is
the relationship between the presentation of an artwork to the presentation
in an artwork, through an artwork, or as an artwork. Lawler’s invitation card
exemplifies precisely these different perspectives.
Secondly, Lawler presented a commenting, counteracting curatorial act
that took as its object the temporalization of the exhibition project and then
answered with a contrary gesture, disabling the process. With the card, she
established her own exhibition space, which contracted the course of time
and thereby avoided the intention that was pursued in 1978, namely
liberating the exhibited from commodification through processuality.
Information on the exhibition, which she offered on the card, transformed
the loose succession of artistic contributions, their informal publication, and
their transitory appearance, into a project with clear and firmly drawn
outlines, structures, and contexts, substituting the instable and intangible of
the ongoing process through a temporarily limited product, which had come
to a standstill. As if the slow flow of subsequent activities had merged into an
image with its contribution, the card thereby also addressed the possibilities
and conditions of temporalization in the presentation of art. Lawler has
achieved a standstill which makes the ephemeral and the processual
accessible for reception and at the same moment, in the oscillation of her
contribution between documentation, advertising, and an independent
artistic product again, only from a different, slightly shifted perspective,
raises the question of the product-like and potentially always also
commodified nature of the exhibition.
As a contributor and at the same time author of a curatorial
constellation, Lawler has clearly shown that it is precisely at the contact
points of the curatorial and the performing arts that its critical potential
emerges. If we understand her card as being exemplary of a curatorial
practice that deals in a performative, self-reflexive way with the conditions
and potentials of exhibiting, performing – or, more generally, with showing
and appearing – the curatorial field reveals itself as a field in which exchange
and overlapping between art, theatre, film, and dance come into the
foreground. It is this putting into motion of not only objects and people, but
also and above all the relations that these acquire with respect to each other,
as well as to space, time and the institution that constitute the specific
power of the curatorial set. With this apprehension that relies on dynamic
relationships and temporary constellations, the curatorial field has relevance
for the production of meaning in all of the above-mentioned arts. Insofar as
the tasks, methods, roles, and statuses become negotiable and restructurable
With her invitation
card, Lawler performed
a sort of temporalization of the exhibition,
which had as its object
both the “performance” as such and its
self-reflective, critical
potentiality.
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– at least ideally – among the agents in the curatorial field, among artists,
curators, dramaturges, or directors, the curatorial practice also brings to
debate the particular conditions and potential of becoming visible. Such an
approach opens up new perspectives for art, dance, theatre, and film alike.
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Artists, Curators and In-Between
Dan Perjovschi
Artists,
Curators
and In-Between
Dan Perjovschi
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Dead Hare, Live
Rebecca Schneider
Dead Hare,
Live
The curate
and the
service
economy
Rebecca Schneider
I
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t is not easy to delineate the “live.” Any rigorous
thought on the drawing of the line between “live”
and “non-live” in performance runs quickly into
problems. Is “live” art to be considered art where
any aspect of the scene of display involves or
includes humans or other beings who are alive? For
surely, a stone, placed in the center of a gallery, is
not “live.” But, those who come to view the stone in
the gallery are – presumably – live. And so, the live attend
the scene of the stone, and thus the broader scene of the
stone contains liveness. The live, then, can take place at any
museum or gallery or theatre or exhibition space with hours
open for attendance.
The issue of the participation of viewers/spectators/
witnesses – however you want to label those who attend to
art – has caused a great deal of textual frenzy over the past
fifty years. The famous rant against “theatricality” on the part
of Michael Fried allowed the aspect of the live in minimalist
art to be that works’ relation to spectators, and this Fried
labeled as its “theatricality, its “temporality,” and its
“distance.” The space between an art object and a live viewer
(though the liveness of the viewer was not discussed in
terms other than temporality) annoyed Fried in its seeming
challenge of the autonomy of the object itself. Allowing for
the live in any scene of art, that is, allowed for a temporality,
a duration, that seemed to challenge the “objectness” of art
itself.
We are extremely familiar with Fried’s anxiety. So
familiar that it seems passé. But the question remains as to
whether there is anything other than live art. The question
has no boundaries. Above I wrote: surely, a stone is not “live.”
Surely? Even this surety comes undone in the rigorous
questioning of the limits of the live.
The question of whether there is anything other than
live art may not be a helpful question in a journal issue
dedicated to the question of how to curate performancebased work. For certainly, our common assumption
concerning “live art” is that “live art” means that the object,
the “art itself,” is living and breathing. Live art is presumably
composed in and of living persons, living artists or living
performers, in physical, potentially face to face, relational
interaction with viewers/witnesses/participants/attendees/
spectators/patrons/passersby – whatever you want to call
those who encounter art, whether in reverie, in critical
thinking, or in passing.
But the question of what is live becomes inordinately
complicated the moment one admits – if one can admit –
that not all those who attend and participate in a scene of art
are necessarily “alive” in the common understanding of what
it means to be living.
Consider the question: Can the dead be in attendance?
Why not? Perhaps a ghost wanders into a museum and takes
part in the consumption of a scene given to play. Such a
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wandering might mean that not all aspects of “live art” are
necessarily live. Why is this a troubling question? Certainly
religious ritual traditions of performance, séances, battle
reenactments, or works of drama such as Shakespeare’s
Hamlet or Ibsen’s Ghosts or Kantor’s Dead Class or
Grotowski’s Acropolis make room for the regular attendance,
or at least the acknowledgement, of the pointed
participation of the dead.
Similarly, a non-breathing substance may be given as
“live,” and a breathing one present(ed) as dead. In 1965 in
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, Joseph Beuys, holding
a dead rabbit, put honey on his head as he talked, mute, to
the corpse. He wrote:
In putting honey on my head I am clearly doing something that has to do with thinking. Human ability is not to
produce honey, but to think, to produce ideas. In this way
the deathlike character of thinking becomes lifelike again.
For honey is undoubtedly a living substance. Human
thinking can be lively too. But it can also be intellectualized to a deadly degree, and remain dead, and express its
deadliness in, say, the political or pedagogic fields.[…]
even a dead animal preserves more powers of intuition
than some human beings with their stubborn rationality.
The stone in the room, that is, may be “live” in a
different way, as a portal even, to another kind of attendance
that complicates the easy assumption that a heartbeat and
breath are the only mode of being “co-present” in time.
Similarly, the seeming living – breathing and thinking – may
be, in profound ways, dead.
But these observations are not necessarily helpful. All
well and good, one might say, but for all practical purposes –
purposes of curation perhaps – Beuys was alive when he
presented How to Explain, and that fact brought (and
continues to bring) complications to the scene of display.
Beuys, as an art object (if you will) on display, could not be
preserved, like a painting, after the fact of performance. And
to set up the space for his act required attention to details
that would not have been required for the setting of a stone
on a gallery floor. For many, the temporal interval of display
would be marked by the fact that Beuys, live, would not
always be live – if live means breathing, walking, talking,
eating, shitting, pissing, sleeping, etc. If live means those
exigent physical things. For Beuys, however, “honey is
undoubtedly a living substance.” If we acknowledge that the
“live” is an open category, a contested category, a category
most exciting because its limits flow, are sticky, not entirely
containable, and are as yet porous and undefined, then we
can not so easily dismiss the radical suggestion Beuys made
in How to Explain: the live may not be entirely live any more
than the dead may be entirely dead. The interesting quality of
liveness may lie in the efforts we make in passage, between
shifting states of being. For Beuys, liveness is contained rather
in an attitude to mystery than in a physical attribute, and thus
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his works were often labeled “ritualistic” or “shamanistic.” In
relation to ritual and shamanism, preservation becomes close
attention, incantation, live reiteration (as of liturgy), or the
simple openness of creative question. Elsewhere I have
mentioned the reiterative duration of call and response – the
way live art may take place across bodies or objects in time
and across time, again and again, even in difference. If liveness
implies breathing – alright then, what is breath? And who is
to legislate the duration of its occurrence?
So, if, with Beuys, honey is a living substance, then
would a pot of honey in a gallery be live art? With or without
the “living” Beuys? Or even without the “living” Ann
Hamilton? In a 1989 installation, privation and excesses,
Hamilton laid out 750,000 copper pennies on a honey-coated
floor. Behind these sat a woman in plain clothes, wringing
honeyed hands over a honey-filled felt hat. And behind the
woman was an enclosure of grazing sheep. I did not attend
that performance, but I experience it now in my mind’s eye.
Something of viscosity sticks to the photographs I attend,
live. Something of Beuys is in attendance to privation and
excesses too – the felt, the honey, the sheep, the coins – the
entire event is as if covered in Beuys’ gold leaf, even now, in
memory of an event I cannot remember live having only
attended the aftermath. What part of citation, reiteration,
even across difference, play in the long life of duration? And
what, anyway, is the period of duration of How to Explain?
Who legislates that the performance ended when Beuys
walked away? Or Hamilton’s ended when the Capp Street
Project in San Francisco closed for the day? Might How to
Explain be ongoing? Is it ongoing not only in object remains
such as photographs, but in Hamilton’s privation and excesses
which is not a reenactment of Beuys but perhaps a riff, or a
body part, or an echo, or even the stray forgotten memory of
a passerby? A dead hare is not a live sheep. Copper pennies
are not gold leaf. And though felt is felt, and honey is honey,
a woman wringing hands is not a man offering an
explanation. Or, is it? Are they? And are both of these works
ongoing in my (or your) articulation of our experiences of
these events, even after the facts of their so-called liveness,
however faulty or deadly or rational or errant those
articulations, as explanations, may be?
Alright. Clearly, we can trouble the limits of liveness as a
category forever. But how does that help the project at hand:
to deliver some thoughts on curating the live? Rather than
troubling the category of “liveness” then, perhaps we can
spend some time focusing on what it means to curate – and
then find our way back to asking what it means to curate
“the live.”
The English word “curate” comes from the Latin curatus,
and refers to “of, belonging to, or having a cure or charge.” Of
course, a “curate” was a word for a parish priest or parson,
who had the charge of the souls in his congregation. (Less
gravely, the word also referred to a type of cake plate.) The
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word “curator” originated somewhat later, and at first
referred to one who has the care or charge of a person or
thing unable to care for herself, himself, itself. The Oxford
English Dictionary gives us: “One appointed as guardian of
the affairs of a person legally unfit to conduct them himself,
as a minor, lunatic, etc.” Later the word became attached to
space, and one definition of curator becomes: “The officer in
charge of a museum, gallery of art, library, or the like; a
keeper, custodian.” It is not until 1870 that, according to The
Oxford English, we find that to curate is: “To act as curator of
(a museum, exhibits, etc.); to look after and preserve.”
I find this brief and admittedly spotty history of the
Latin curatus in its English travels to be compelling.
Somehow we move from ritual caretaker (parish priest) to
guardian of the unfit to arrive in the 1870s at the sense of
preservation and exhibition we assume for the word at
present. As more and more work engages in performance,
touching on aspects of the event and collectible under the
rubric of “live acts,” perhaps the antiquated sense of
“curator” as the parish priest or caretaker of lunatics has
returned to some degree? No doubt, those in the position of
having to conceive, fundraise, finance, book, manage,
orchestrate, and explain live acts to funders and to patrons,
and then manage the space between live performers or live
honey and live participants (sometimes
The stone in the room, that is, may be ”live” in
conceived as witnesses, sometimes as
a different way, as a portal even, to another kind
spectators, sometimes as art patrons), have
of attendance that complicates the easy assumption
wondered whether he or she were actually
tending a church of some sort, an asylum for
that a heartbeat and breath are the only mode of
the insane, or an orphanage for the resiliently
being ”co-present” in time.
illegitimate. At recent highly publicized “live
art” events, such as Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in March 2010, the
sense of worshippers at the shrine of presence (if not
lunatics at the threshold of hysterical reverie) was evident
everywhere. Ritual rushes in where “object” and “objectivity”
are replaced by the auratic artist in the temple of High Art.
But not all performance-based art is an invitation to
acritical worship. Think of another highly publicized New
York event: Tino Sehgal’s processual “This Progress” at the
Guggenheim in March 2010, where children and others usher
Guggenheim patrons through a set of questions about
Enlightenment ideals. Or think of Sehgal’s “This is
Propaganda,” where museum guards take the stage as art,
event, or situation themselves. In Sehgal’s work it is critical
questions that are explicitly invited and carefully tended.
With the orchestration of children or museum employees,
and the orchestration of unanswered questions in somewhat
open situations, the notion of “guardian” might return to the
word “curator” in a rather pronounced, if curious, manner.
The curator, like a curate, tends to and attends to a
charge: the orchestration of a situational event. That event
(whether composed in and of the so-called live or the so-
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called dead) may be an open event, leading to critical
questions, or a closed event, requiring the disciplining of the
faithful to worship. Or, perhaps, an amalgam of both, or a
porous debate over which.
And thus, reader, please note: I am not claiming that
live art is necessarily shamanistic or necessarily disciplinary
or necessarily critical or necessarily acritical, even as I remind
us that the Latin roots of the word curation point to the
rituals involved in administering to a charge. My own
preference, in any case, runs toward work that opens into
creative critical inquiry and politicized thought rather than
work that worships at an altar of so-called presence. As a
viewer, witness, or participant in art, dance, or theatre I
always submit even the most apparently Art-reverent work
to critical inquiry, for I do not see critical inquiry as irreverent.
However, I would not claim that another attendee, who
chooses against critical inquiry, would be wrong. I do not
think that art, artists, art patrons, curators, or historians can
legislate any singular meaning to the experience of an event,
object, context, or act. But we can curate such events –
curate, tend, guard, and shepherd – questions. Such as
questions that attend to the limits of liveness or our
investments in liveness, and we can, indeed, pose living
(open) questions about the very events we experience.
In the spirit of questions, I leave the
A great deal more work can be done on precisely
reader with one question I find particularly
how immaterial affect circulates as immaterial
important today. In my opinion, it is
commodity – that is how afect as commodity is
important to ask how contemporary interest
in “live art” is related to the scene of global
produced, paid for, exchanged – across the
capital today, in which, reductively speaking,
bodies. Who benefits and how?
object-based commodity capitalism (with
commodities produced largely in industrial nations) has been
augmented (if not replaced) by the full force of an affectdriven service economy in what are now called postindustrial societies. If the historical avant-garde turned away
from the object toward performance in order, at least in part,
to challenge the broad social investment in the production
and circulation of commodity objects (including
commodified art), in what way does “dematerialized art”
(though that phrase is problematic as the living body is
clearly material) offer an arena for the critique of a neoliberal
service economy that trades in the circulation, purchase, and
expenditure of live experience, or affective engagement?
This question is, in some ways, overly obvious, and yet a
great deal more work can be done on precisely how
immaterial affect circulates as immaterial commodity – that
is, how affect as commodity is produced, paid for, exchanged
– across bodies. Who benefits and how? Sometimes the body
producing the performance is the body of the performance
artist him or herself, but often, today, performance art is
delegated to “other persons,” or animals, or even objects,
who reenact, or stand in, or are in other ways instructed (and
sometimes paid) to realize, live, an artists’ artwork. In
performance, it is the “services” that are bought and sold.
Experiences in time, rather than goods considered durable
and “timeless,” are manufactured and exchanged in venues
open to such exhibition.
Of course, the selling of experience has contributed to
the many questions that attend the role of documentation
relative to performance art today. It has been habitual to
claim that the photograph is not the performance itself. Yet,
more and more, photographs of events at one time
considered non-reproduceable acts are treated as scripts for
future live performance, whether reenactments or
interpretations, re-dos or riffs on precedence. That is,
photographs are not the live art but are also not not the live
art. They become part and parcel of an ongoing, everchanging temporal stream of exchange. Conservative artists
intent on preservation and securing the “rights” of so-called
“seminal artists” (a phrase preferred by Marina Abramović)
have worked to shut down accessibility so that museums (or
individuals, corporations, etc.) might own the rights to live
performances (and collectors reap the financial benefits),
much as playwrights or their estates can determine the
future of any production of a theatre play. But not all who
trade in live art are conservative, and curators and the spaces
they curate will be in a position to impact whether the future
is open or closed for exploration in live art. The issue of the
laboring body – and the fact that the creation of live art is
often collaborative or collective – are issues that deeply
threaten the long tradition of solo artist/singular genius that
forms the backbone of the visual art industry. Dance and
theatre have long been more collective artforms – despite
the fact that playwrights have too often dominated through
copyright – and the labor of the dancer or the labor of the
actress are labors that deserve careful address by curators,
artists, and scholars thinking through live performance
today.
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Dead Hare, Live
Rebecca Schneider
It is somewhat too easy to claim that live performance
may participate more in the vast touristic or theme-park-like
market for experiences than in the market for objects. Such a
claim may be reductive and deserve greater thought.
Certainly, it would be a mistake to too thoroughly separate
live arts, such as theatre and dance and performance art,
from object arts. For theatre and dance and performancebased events have long served tourist industries and
promoted (rather than critiqued or curtailed) the circulation
of goods: (the photograph, the mug in the museum store,
the poster, the t-shirt, the coffee table book of the exhibition,
etc.). Similarly, documents of performance art have
commanded a “pretty penny” in certain situations. While
visual art museums (and performance-based visual artists
themselves) may still shy away from comparisons with
theatres or dance halls (or with theme parks) – should they,
really? What role can curators play in articulating the
participation of museums and exhibition spaces in the
service economy? If museums have become comfortable
making room (after the fact) for the critique of commodity
capitalism through exhibiting documents recalling the work
of earlier avant-gardes such as Dada, Fluxus, or feminist art,
is there an argument to be made that current live work
potentially interrogates or renders apparent for analysis the
contemporary service economy – an economy that
museums already participate in by offering art patrons an
afternoon’s experiential engagement with material objects?
There are many more questions to be posed and
investigated in this vein of inquiry. I do think these are
important questions for curators, who, one-time curates of
the passage of souls, came to serve the passage of art goods.
Now perhaps, curators of live arts oversee the passage of
affect, the circulation of services. The live acts of artists and
their laboring delegates circulate the art-commodity of
experience. Will the curate interrogate the neoliberal
conditions of this passage? Or serve those conditions? Or
both?
ajickarF
68
Shoreditch Park,
London
Frakcija #55
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Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
ajickarF
70
Motivation at the End of Times
Mårten Spångberg
Motivation
at the End
of Times
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
To gain
respect is just
the beginning
Mårten Spångberg
A
programmer of dance comes up to me and says:
“-What do you think of the program, it’s nice don’t you
think?” What can I say? As we know, within the neoliberal predicament that we now live, the worst is to
object, to have an opinion, to show attitude.
Metaphorically speaking my answer could only be:
“-I’m available.” If I am in the program, I can obviously
not not comply and support it, and if I am not, any
objection would propose that I’m jealous of those that are in and can thus
only comply. Yet, I try to formulate an answer that uses a double rhetoric,
proposing that the program is congenial and at the same time saying it’s not.
My argument could be based on an asymmetry between established and not
so established acts, the lack of representation of non-western artists, weak
contingency in the program and so on. Independent of my response the
answer I receive in return is always the same: “-Yes, you are right, but you
know our budget has been very pressured this year. We had enormous cuts
for this season, and I’m really happy that we got it together at all.” I accept
the argument and nod understandingly.
A few months later, the same programmer shows up after seeing, let’s
say the premiere of a new show of mine, insinuating that it didn’t entirely
fulfill expectations or was simply not a masterpiece. I respond: “-Yes, you are
right but you know our budget was very pressured. We really had enormous
cuts for this season, and I’m really happy that we got it together at all.” I
don’t think so! Such a line of argumentation is not acceptable emanating
from the mouth of an artist. The artist acts, it is assumed, independently of
budgets, and if there are cuts, subsidies missing or similar, the artist is
supposed to change the format, come up with solutions, sack the producer.
Make a duet or solo, with less rehearsal hours, get another co-producer, hire
faster dancers. But who would expect a programmer to sack some people in
the organization, do the cleaning or accounting, double as a technician or
wardrobe assistant? Programmers are victims of external circumstances,
whereas artists only have themselves to blame.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
For programmers to gain my respect, stop using budget cuts as an
argument.
So my response is always implicitly “-I’m available”. Whatever the price,
whatever the circumstances, whatever the proposition is, in the era of
projects we are all always available. In our current economic flow, as Boris
Groys recently argued, it doesn’t really matter if one is in the program or not,
what matters is to have a project, in particular to have a project that can
attach to many enough surfaces and connect to many enough other projects.
In fact, it doesn’t matter what the project is, as long as it promotes a specific
identity. What the artist today is busy with is not primarily to make pieces or
to articulate concepts but to produce identities that are at the same time
specific enough to make a difference and conventional enough to maintain a
rather romantic image of what the artist should be occupied with. The really
clever artist has stopped making pieces at all, but jumps from residency to
residency, from lab to lab, project to project. What matters today is not
products, pieces or premieres but activity and mobility. As Krõõt Juurak has
proposed, the artist has become a pet, a domesticated creature that bides his
time, sits in cafés scribbling in a notebook or being busy e-mailing.
When Paulo Virno argues in The Grammar of the Multitude that the
contemporary worker has become a virtuoso in talking, using the dancer as
an example of the immaterial laborer, he doesn’t presuppose anything
positive but rather raises a warning: what do we do now when we are labor
and there is absolutely no way out. When control has become omnipresent,
in and through ourselves, there can be no exit door to sneak out of. “-I’m
available” is in our contemporary times substituting any claim of an avantgarde or subversive attempt. And for those who still insist, who keep on
trying to break rules or conventions, who work too hard, or forget about
balancing their presence, not keeping their cool, the culture of availability has
only one answer: You’re a fool.
For artists to gain my respect, be foolish and fuck balance.
A programmer of dance announces to me the importance he poses on
composing a program for his local audience. I support the argument, but
wonder what it is that makes certain dance and performance acts, works by
certain artists or groups perfect for every local audience in every corner of
Europe? It cannot be because those acts are so generic that they fit
everything hence that would dismiss the argument of being susceptible to
the needs of the local audience. Nor can it be because these acts are so
specific, then they would not be presented in every festival and season
program. The argument must be found somewhere else? It is my belief that
what local audience implies is not the spectator but local politicians. It
means: “-I have to present a program that is agreeable to local subsidy
agencies”, and they expect, more or less without exception, a well-meaning
mixture of local acts and international reputation.
For programmers to gain my respect, stop using the local audience as
an argument when what it means is serving local politicians.
An alternative chain of arguments on the same issue emphasize identity
production. Working for a specific local audience implies that the
programmer feels responsibility to the progression of a local scene and its
audience, but then again how come this responsibility without exception
includes three, five or ten internationally celebrated artists or groups. Is it
possibly so that the programmer rather easily forgets his assumed
responsibility and instead seeks confirmation in other programmers? It feels
good, and needs no further explanation, to say: “-Yes, I’m also showing their
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Motivation at the End of Times
Mårten Spångberg
ajickarF
72
“
So my response
is always
implicitly ”– I'm
available”. Whatever
the price, whatever
the circumstances,
whatever the
proposition is, in the
era of projects we are
all always available.
Motivation at the End of Times
Mårten Spångberg
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
new work.” or “-I’ve been keeping my eye on them for several years and I
think my audience is ready for them now.”
The same argument is evidently valid for the artist too. It feels good to
belong to a context and is obviously uncomfortable to issue one or other
conflict. Over the fifteen years that I have been engaged in dance and
performance I have never experienced such a lack of conflict as today. The
first dictum of contemporary cultural entrepreneurship: Don’t ever get angry!
Don’t be critical either! Since for years critique has been replaced by
criticality, the ethical version of the ideologically saturated notion of critique.
Criticality is like a touch pad, the theatrical version of pure navigation, the
entrepreneur’s variation of risk performing the endless shifts of neo-liberal
governance. It’s the slippery escape from any form of responsibility, a smug
smile standing in for a lack of guts to stake out a territory. Criticality is good
for you, it’s kind of participatory, it’s implementing the individual instead of
producing public spectacle. In the land of criticality everything is fine. It’s
Prozac for cultural producers, personal without passion, skepticism without
fundament, the epitome of opportunism.
For an artist to gain my respect, raise your voice and judge. Be, or
pretend to be rich enough, to afford being categorical.
It appears paradoxical that at the same time as dance and performance
is offered more opportunities than ever before, both concerning
performances, residencies and other projects, we simultaneously experience
an equalization of what is tolerated. The differences between dance
performances were probably smaller twenty years ago, but I don’t think it is
only memory that plays around with my perception. Dance looked similar,
what differed was the production value. Not only in economical terms, but in
respect of global circumstances. Dance has become professional to the
extent that it has lost its passion. Dance has become enthusiastic which is
another word for shrinking in front of circumstances.
It is my guess that, among other reasons, contemporary education has
become so good in preparing students for established markets that they
simply don’t know what else to do but to comply, be enthusiastic and
perform criticality. It mustn’t be the responsibility of education to teach
students to fit in, rather the contrary: the task should be the opposite, to
encourage the student to pursue other paths, different formats to stop
confirming existing markets. This can not be done by preaching counter
ideology or by blaming the market, but rather through allowing the student
not to identify with what a dancer, choreographer or performance maker is,
i.e. to appropriate identity. It feels good and is comfortable to be a
choreographer and it’s a shaky path to create ones own territory.
A few years ago French thinker Jacques Rancière contributed to our
context with a text entitled The Emancipated Spectator, where he argues that
theatre per definition is stultifying and as a way out proposed an activated
spectator, that without becoming a participant one can activate him- or
herself not on the basis of identity but rather in respect of individuation, i.e.
expanding the possibility for what the individual can be. We should however
remember that the emancipated individual is congenial to our present
political climate. Emancipation for Rancière does not mean to be, or become
more oneself, but on the contrary to contest one’s identity and what
constitutes identity (in general) in our specific contexts and environments.
For artists to gain my respect, stop pretending to emancipate yourself
when what you want most of all is to belong.
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
A programmer of dance tells me how important it is to engage in the
development of the local scene. I wonder, but how does it happen that you
pay them, the locals, fees that are peanuts in comparison to what you pay
international celebrities? Is that some contemporary form of care? By the
way, how does it happen that the local and non-established artists are
always presented on the “small” stage and always in the middle of the week.
If you are keen on promoting the local scene why not offer them the central
venue on the weekend. If the international celebrity anyway brings in an
audience (which is always why they are there “-We have to have a few big
shows, you know – we need to secure a general audience.” Nobody seems to
like it, really.), why not program them on Monday and Tuesday?
A programmer of dance tells me that the development of the local
scene is so important that they have created a lab for their artists to engage.
A forum for discussion and confrontation, research and development, when
what it tends to boil down to is that the lab is an excuse to not have to
present those artists properly, and yet swear yourself free from any kind of
accusation of excluding the local. And by the way, everybody knows that the
participants in the lab never get paid in accord with a performance fee. Labs
are cheap solutions, end of discussion.
In commercial industries it is common that 5-7% of the revenue is
reinvested in research and development. R&D does not mean to develop a
new product or design a new model, i.e. applied research but rather blue sky
research. Innovation intensive business such as pharmaceuticals use up to
15% of their revenue on R&D. It is common to understand our field of action
as innovation intensive, and it is a business – it’s just that our client (like the
weapons industry) is primarily the state, but I have never – I underline never
– heard about a dance festival or season that invests more than 0% on R&D
of the revenue. Commerce knows, if we don’t upgrade, if we don’t invest in
blue sky research our clients will beat us to the finishing line, and it is not just
about beating somebody else but to stay on top of oneself. The lab format
gets even more patronizing when it is topped with an international authority
giving a two-hour introduction to his or her artistic mission, of course after
having been presented on the big stage.
During the lab the artistic director, preferably with some international
colleagues, shows up – of course unannounced – appearing to be interested
in the artists’ creative process. What happens? Obviously, the artist will
present an absolutely safe argumentation that ensures – hopefully – the
opportunity to be part of the “real” program next year. I’m available! The so
called labs, luckily not so popular anymore, have nothing to do with
creativity, sharing ideas or motivating each other. No, it’s a perfect ground
for defensive warfare to maintain one’s positions. What the artist today sells
is ideas and originality so why would anybody think that a lab would function
as an opportunity to share. No, labs consolidate the dynamics of the market
and function as an eminent opportunity for programmers to surveil any kind
of revolutionary tendencies. Only the extremely naïve would consider the
idea of sharing, that would be similar to Coca-Cola putting their secret recipe
on their web page.
The central problem with dance programming today, in which the
programmer and artists are equal parts, is that ideology and conviction
almost without exception has become subordinate to financial and political
circumstances.
So what do we do when the opportunity to object is void and nothing?
What do we do when everybody is guilty of nothing and nobody dares to
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Mårten Spångberg
ajickarF
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Motivation at the End of Times
Mårten Spångberg
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
make a move as it always will harm your opportunity to… whatever it is that
you do? Nobody is to blame and all of us are gladly participating in a market
based on identity and belonging. Programmers as well as artists happily bend
over and offer themselves to the whims of the market. Is there anything left
except disillusion? The first answer must be no, but perhaps there are
measures to take. And look who is talking, the first thing to do is to stop
complaining, but complaining is easy as it also consolidates identity.
Over the last twenty years the visual arts sector has developed strong
curatorial discourses. Perhaps not the entire field but any curator, as well as
artist, with ambitions in contemporary art prides himself with an articulation
due to curatorial practices, never mind if you are on the facilitating or, so to
say producing side. An important consequence of such discourses is a
disconnection between director and curator. Today it is rare that a director of
a museum or Kunsthalle is one and the same person. A director of a museum
is often curating part of a program and is obviously the final voice when it
comes to fundamental decisions, but a director who puts his nose into an
assigned curator’s choices is rare, not to mention incorrect. In the field of
dance, choreography and performance the situation is the opposite, it is
almost always the director, with financial and institutional responsibility, who
articulates the entire program. The emergence of the “independent” curator
implies a whole set of new strategies. The independent curator, to the same
extent as the artist, offers or sells a concept (a completely misused and
misunderstood term) or proposal and is chosen in respect of a competitive
landscape. The independent curator of course has to obey economical
circumstances but the objective is not to simply stay alive but to produce
specificity. This is not entirely true, there are certainly hierarchies, lobby and
business as usual, but the very possibility of an independent curator offers a
completely different mode of operation. A problem in dance is that directors,
doubling as programmers, especially of festivals, occupy their position
forever. A director of a festival can easily run a festival for decades. The result
is often that the maintenance has higher priority over the quality of the
program. First, if you have been the director of a festival for twenty years, of
course you are not about to take a risk in programming if it might jeopardize
your position, and second, after twenty years in one position, you have also
closed off any other working opportunities. If contracts are generally longterm, it is obvious that flux and dynamics will decrease. Thirdly, after twenty
years in a position it is very easy to forget that you are the director of a
festival and that the festival is not about yourself.
So how does the independent curator market his specificity next to
producing exhibitions? By engaging in a position, by articulating specific
motivations in regard to aesthetics, modes of production, historical accuracy,
specific knowledge and, not rarely, through a political strategy, statement or
stronghold. Any curator with ambitions in the field of contemporary art
negotiates aesthetics and politics through writing: in magazines,
publications, catalogues or orally at conferences, seminars or in educational
frames. In the field of dance similar articulations are extremely rare.
Programmers hardly every give evidence to aesthetic or political positions.
Objection, there are often texts in programs etc. by directors and
programmers. Correct, but these statements can rarely be read as political
statements and are more often similar to magazine editorials trying to justify
the content of the current issue. In dance and performance it is rather
understood as a big mistake to articulate a position also concerning the
artist. Better not say anything, and you will not be kept responsible.
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The amount of literature and magazine press within the field of visual
art is immense, whereas in dance we hardly see anything of the sort. Art
magazines, of different quality, flourish all over the world, but in dance there
is hardly anything. With the risk of sounding patronizing, publishing (not to
mention translations) and magazine production is most active in the Balkans.
In the rest of Europe there is hardly a magazine worth remembering, not a
single independent publishing house that I need to keep an eye on.
Publishing and bookmaking is not only about identity boasting or serving
ballet kids with glossy images. Publishing is a means of empowerment, of
conflict and not least to produce visibility. Dancers, choreographers, makers
and doers, programmers, are you fine with the fact that those who write
about your work tendentiously consider dance to be at its peak sometime
during the early 80s or chicken out on their ideologies because of financial
difficulties or demands on sold copies. No worries, let them be, but remember
it is those who write history who decide what is important. Publish yourself,
your friends and enemies, and don’t put up some petty argument that you
are busy with the body not text; publishing is a means, and a good one, to
claim territory.
Moreover, the emergence of the independent curator in the visual arts
has intensified the development of new formats. Conventional formats are
still up and running but over the last two decades we have seen a number of
new formats taking form. Among them thematic exhibitions, biennales,
shows exclusively formed around commissions or proposals utilizing entirely
new media such as books, magazines, the internet or urban contexts.
Compare that to the situation in dance and performance where the festival
format especially has consolidated itself excessively. I personally cannot
recall a single festival that has elaborated a strong proposal, or even more
rarely a proposal that is controversial or excluding. The dance festival of
today is void of position and is almost always a bric-a-brac of creations of
the last 18 months. Lately we have seen a few brave attempts; these should
be celebrated even if they are just attempts and might not work for the next
fifty years.
Consider that there are approximately 250 conventional black box
theaters spread over Europe. How does it come that they all utilize the same
marketing strategy and stick to it year after year when the lack of audience is
always a central problem. Is there some central agency that has decided that
a black box theatre must have a season program presented in the form of an
accordion-like folder? How is it possible that the imagination of
programmers, festival and season directors are so limited that the accordion
has become mandatory.
Or turn the argument around, how is it possible that the dance artist
spends three months on rehearsing a new piece and twenty minutes on
producing the press image when the performance often is seen by less than
300 people, and the program is printed in 25,000 copies? Shouldn’t we
change the procedure and spend three months on the picture and rehearse
20 minutes? How is it possible that we allow five lines of generic text to
present a piece of art that we have spent months or even years in preparing?
Every festival and season program presents every artist with the same
amount of text, five lines written to fit everybody. Such a procedure obviously
favors the already established and offers hardly any opportunity for a
different conception of what a performance can be to flourish.
A direct comparison with visual art and museum culture is obviously
useless as circumstances are very different, and at the same time the
“
Frakcija
Motivation at the End of Times
Mårten Spångberg
Having in mind
that we live in a
time of performance
we have to take on the
possible production of
new formats, new
modes of production
and representation.
ajickarF
76
“
Every time we
don't write a
kick ass political
statement about this
year's festival, we
know that the
audience will not
upgrade their modes
of experience.
Motivation at the End of Times
Mårten Spångberg
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
pressure to attractive visitors is also overwhelming there, but nevertheless
visual art has developed into a much more heterogeneous field over the last
20 years than dance and performance. It is my firm belief that this has to do
with the establishment of curatorial discourse, and it is because of the lack of
the same that dance has ended up maintaining aging structures and
strategies. If dance is to have a future it is imperative that we develop our
own discourses around programming or curating. We must certainly not
invite curators etc. from visual art to inform us about how it is to be done.
No, we must do this on our own terms, take up the tough task of producing
our own discursive terrain no matter if it will cause turbulence and havoc.
There will be collateral damage, but I can ensure you nobody will die. The
policy that governs contemporary dance is one of inclusion and everybodyshould-be-given-the-opportunity; still, we all call for transformation. This is
a paradox, if we want change it will happen on behalf of someone. Some
things have to go, if we want something new to emerge.
The last time we experienced a stronger shift of policy concerning
dance and performance in Western Europe was in the late 70s and early 80s.
Young makers and doers, supported by equally young managers, directors
and programmers refused to be included and comply with the stale
machinery of state theaters and similar at the time. After a few years a line of
venues appeared, willing to take a risk, often without financial opportunities,
to host young artists and groups. In Holland, Belgium, Germany, not to
mention what later became Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia, venues and festivals
flourished although the scale was small. With the emergence of new
theaters, often considering rather new program policies a new generation of
artists and groups established themselves. Three decades later the situation
has changed a lot but has it changed enough. These venues, festivals, artists
and groups are obviously not willing to give up their positions, so to try to
force one’s way in is not the smartest solution. Why would such major
entities offer more than just enough space for young and upcoming artists,
when they are good as it is? They don’t want to be overtaken or lose their
positions. Festival and season programs are children of a certain time and
context, we can work to make them a little bit better, a little bit more open, a
little bit this or that, but there will be no major changes as long as the
economy doesn’t simply collapse. So if we want something to change on a
more radical level we must simply abandon ship and start from scratch. We
must force ourselves to not set up another, perhaps alternative, festival. We
must force ourselves not to start a new space. If we do we will just end up in
the same position one more time, and the second time we will just look
stupid. The curatorial discourses we have to engage in must not be
concerned with “what can be done”, or better, with strategic matters. It is the
structural or fundamental changes that have to be approached. Our future is
not easy, because what stands in front of us is the necessity to invent new
formats and radically new opportunities.
However, the future is bright. Over the last 15 to 25 years our society,
our world, has seen a veritable transformation concerning production,
communication and economy. Twenty-five years ago manufacturing to a
large degree governed the world, but since then we have experienced a
strong move towards capacities of distribution, communication and the
mobility of value. One could say that the world has experienced a shift of
focus from manufacturing, to production of goods, to performance and
movement. Concerning art, it is obvious that a regime driven by
manufacturing finds its accomplice in an art form that focuses on objects,
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
namely visual art. If today we live in a paradigm governed by performance,
such a paradigm needs to finds its related expression in the arts. The future
doesn’t look bright for visual art, at least not art that is concerned with the
reproduction of objects, but for dance, choreography and performance it
certainly appears that we can look forward to a bright and flourishing future,
but only if we let go of the established models for what those expressions
can be. The theatre, festival and season program does not as, e.g. Peggy
Phelan argued, promote performance in the sense of its ephemeral status; on
the contrary, they handle dance and performance as objects. It is with this is
mind that we live in a time of performance, that we have to take on the
possible production of new formats, new modes of production and
representation. If we do, we can only succeed, but it will imply a fundamental
shift in our understanding of what performance, dance and choreography
can be. This, however, does not mean that we have to evacuate the theatre
and desperately seek new sites for representation. No, what we have to
evacuate is the strategic levels of our expressions.
A director of a reasonably large festival recently stated that he was
proud to welcome a certain artist to the festival for the seventeenth year in a
row. I wasn’t surprised, as this is what happens at more or less every festival
(perhaps not seventeen), but what would surprise me is if Tate Modern’s
director would proudly announce the seventeenth exhibition in equally many
years by one and the same artist. That is unthinkable, even considering that it
might be a small piece in some overlookable group exhibition that happens
every year. Every time we present for-the-nth-year, something else is not
presented. Every time we install the big company in the big space, that space
will not be available for something else to develop. Every time ballet-this-orthat-big-name is installed in the program, we know that something not
ballet-this-or-that-big-name will not be written about in the local or
national press. Every time we don’t write a kick ass political statement about
this year’s festival, we know that the audience will not upgrade their modes
of experience but will maintain their taste and identity and make
circumstances to change something next year even smaller. Every time we
argue that a festival or season program should have something for
everybody, should be available for everyman, we have also lowered our
ambitions regarding our art form and its future. Why are you making art, why
are you programming a festival or season? To please everyman, the general
population or audience? I hope not, because if that is our ambition there are
certainly businesses that offer much better salaries and fancier parties. Have
you forgotten why you are making art or why you set out to realize that first
festival? Those pieces, festivals and seasons that we created even though we
knew it would cost and would interfere with our personal economies? We did
it because we couldn’t find strong arguments enough not to, because we had
no smaller ambitions than to change the world, because dance,
choreography and performance were synonymous with life and death.
Pathetic, oh yes, but pathetic enough to forget? Have we forgotten our
mission statements, did we change them from “until death” to “until budget
cuts”?
Fifteen or so years ago networks showed up as the new fad. The
motivation was to share expenses, to discover new artists (often from exotic
places like the Balkans) and support upcoming artists. What has happened
today? Networks today are a means to consolidate power, and hence by
definition – homogenizing. Oh yes, we love to support those artists from the
Balkans but only one year, not 17 in a row. Today a production that is not
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promoted by an international network is an impossibility. There are
exceptions but that is not the issue here, but what is is to what extent we,
programmers and artists, are willing to sell out specificity in favor of fitting in.
Networks are for dance what ecology is for animals, a restrictive baby-sitter
that places the poor animal in a restricted area. “-Here you go, play here but
not too loud.” Stop being so fucking civilized and take the risk of being
considered a fool.
Recently I looked into a well-known theater’s statistics and found out
that one and the same company had been presented on average ten nights
per season. Considering that all performances were sold out, the total
amount of sold tickets would be approximately 10,000. That’s a third of the
audience that the local outdoors concert arena could host in one night. So
why not present the big company one night at the Olympia stadium instead
of ten nights at the theatre. The counter argument is obvious. “-Dance has to
be experienced direct, it is about presence…” and so on, but what is the
difference between dance and a concert with Metallica that nobody has a
problem in sharing with 50,000 other people looking at video screens. As far
as I can remember, nobody had a problem with authenticity when Rolling
Stones performed in front of 1.2 million people at Copacabana in 2005. So
why isn’t the big dance company presented on the same beach? It’s not
because of the above arguments, it’s because if the size of the economy gets
big enough, big money is also moving in. Better to continue presenting the
big company in the theatre so that nothing will change. Tate Modern is a
good or possibly bad example that things can change and scale is relative.
Ten years ago it was unimaginable that an artist would move into the Turbine
Hall and today it’s rather obligatory for an artist to reach star Olafur
Eliasson’s and the Rolling Stones – who had more or less the same amount of
visitors – capacity. They just did it a bit quicker, but then why can’t Rosas,
Jérôme Bel or Jiří Kylián have 1.2 million people looking at their work?
The problem with dance is its performed little brother concept, which is
in fact just hiding in the corner not to have to compete with the big guys.
Only if our expression develops a decent curatorial discourse can we
produce proper arguments against the ridiculous argumentation above, but
as long as we don’t, we will always be subject to the whims of local
politicians, the well-meaning hand of state cultural policy, and will never be
able to defend ourselves against budget cuts and identity hungry misery.
Break it,
stretch it,
bend it,
crush it,
crack it,
fold it.
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8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore
adjacencies. Lack judgement. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing
where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice:
begin anywhere.
13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames
and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
16. Collaborate. The space between people working together
is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight,
and vast creative potential.
28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new
conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking
demands new forms of expression. The expression
generates new conditions.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and
regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of
creative life. They are often understandable efforts to
order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes.
Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
Bruce Mau, “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”
– 43 theses
For a different
culture
of seeing,
reflecting and
producing
Christine Peters
Translated from the Croatian by Marina Miladinov
W
hen it comes to work today,
we are experiencing a general
change regarding both the
modes of production and the
context within which the
increasingly project-based
work is performed – not least
within the cultural
production and its transfer of knowledge. In art, collaborative
and interdisciplinary working methods are challenging the
idea of the curator as an individual author while global
markets are becoming overwhelmingly differentiated and
un-transparent. Within these changes, well-established
networks seem simply out-dated. Of course, all this is
accompanied by a corresponding change in contemporary
formats of production and presentation – but unfortunately
the keyword is indeed “react”: additional strategies of
presentation are developed, which do not surpass the
standardized ones and present themselves only as
complementary to the actual exhibition, the actual festival,
etc. – such as the project-based lounge zones with archives
and reading rooms, or interactive info-displays, which merely
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enlarge the variety of offer. They, however, cannot replace
long-term strategies when it comes to developing a far more
consistent and structurally progressive logic of production.
Complementary displays populate a parallel world, define a
market within the market, and mostly function free from the
programmatic work in question, thus soon vanishing again
from our view and our memory, sooner than we would
perhaps like. However, what we would urgently need is a
permanent confrontation of various ways of thinking and
working in the professional field of art, if we want to use the
existing institutions and resources for things that were not
possible before. We need to unlock new possibilities,
contexts, and networks, otherwise they will remain
inaccessible.
The goal here should be to expand the time and space
for what we are doing: time and space for creating new
climates, hassle-free working atmospheres in which the
inherently viral processes in question could be made
transparent, reconstructable, cross-linked, subject to
reflection and criticism, in such a way that all these
developments would be of use to the participating artists
and staff that work in this field. Therefore, on the one hand it
is of eminent importance to establish a wider context for
meeting each other by developing a long-term and contentoriented agenda which deals with questions of the sociocultural and aesthetic environment of the to be produced
artefacts and supported artists. It is precisely the festivals
and biennials that are visible mainly in the time-period in
which they take place, generating highlights and only briefly
vitalizing their cultural environment. And if they are
thematically oriented, the discourses on which they focus are
activated temporarily; their questions are concentrated and
ticked off in lectures, workshops, and panel discussions
among the experts. These standardized forms of temporary
cultural activity thwart the chances of its broader radiation
and reception, of creating a critical public, which could be
achieved if the programmatic reflection went hand in hand
with the development of flexible dramaturgies of production
and presentation, both in preparation and in post-
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processing, in order to establish another culture of
transparency with regard to the underlying criteria for
selection and support. In this respect, curating would imply
developing different structures for the production and
presentation of cultural artefacts, as well as generating a
different permeability as to the topics inherent in a
programme. These might be realised, for example, through
nomadic platforms which cross-link a city’s existing creative
resources in order to mark the cultural life all year round,
while its results could remain subject to criticism through
follow-ups and function as ferments for future agendas.
The only problem is that many institutions, biennials,
and systems of sponsoring find it difficult to imagine new
artistic and curatorial approaches in structurally long-term
forms like the above mentioned one. More precisely, the
festivals and biennials tend to defend themselves by arguing
that projects spanning over several years cannot be arranged
or financed, and that one should not repeat the same things
too much, for example by collaborating with the same artists
again and again; instead, one should cater to the tangible
pressure of an audience permanently craving for new things.
However, the pressure of productions that goes along with
that, including tight deadlines for preparation and postprocessing, as well as dealing with a huge variety of program
offers, not mentioning the reduced subsidies, imposes a
breathtaking rhythm and results in constant exhaustion that
– given the fact that it is all primarily about human resources
– can no longer be justified. How can we halt this attitude in
an unprogressive curating that subjects itself to dry politics
and voluntarily agrees to a service-based production and its
commodification? Of course, in artistic and curatorial
production having more time does not necessarily mean
better quality. No one claims that. Many artists, however,
already plan projects that run for several years, with time
niches for critical dialogue and manoeuvre space for
appropriate post-production, or set up specialized agendas.
For example, in developing growing archives (such as a
performative model, digital archive, library, and so on) which
can with time generate considerable critical potential. Thus,
The goal should be to expand the time and space for what we
are doing: for creating new climates, hassle-free working
atmospheres in which the inherently viral processes in
question could be made transparent, reconstructable, crosslinked, and subject to reflection and criticism.
the conception and communication of a different culture of
seeing, reflecting, and producing – for example, regarding
the complexity of selective criteria = their inclusion and
exclusion principles, their cultural contexts, etc., can perfectly
well be taken as a starting point and contact surface for an
in-depth curatorial debate.
Thematically oriented festivals and exhibitions in
particular often have the problem that they are unable to
overcome their ambitious adherence to keywords and
theses, and since the presented art cannot answer to these
claims, it appears undeservedly deficient and small. Here it
would be beneficial, for example, to devote more time in
advance to conversation with the involved artists or even
experts from different disciplines in order to present a topic
in all its complexity, in a more multi-layered way, and to
reflect on structural alternatives. It certainly requires a
considerable amount of risk readiness, as well as sensibility, if
one wishes to develop and implement new forms of cultural
work, since time is money. Besides, such a strategy
presupposes, first and foremost, a re-evaluation of priorities
for all annual expenditures, which would do away with all
outdated profitability formulas à la “XX days of event = XX
artists x XX projects from XX countries at XX locations for XX
visitors = tickets”. Because not only cultural agents and
artists are subjected to a raging standstill that manifests
itself particularly in a product-ditching shortly after its public
launch. The audience often as well fails to orient itself
straightaway in all those short-lived discourses on
contemporary production, in that crossover of theory and
practice, of transdisciplinary formats, and a cultural offering
of overwhelming variety, especially if these offers remain
stuck in one-time presentations and fail to open spaces for
resonance. Moreover, this old scheme of action counteracts
the permanent pressure of success in terms of opening up
new segments of public, since the “one-shot” strategy
cannot be a long-term one, because here one also needs
some breath in communicating with the new recipients.
Thus, for example, the idea of a touring festival called
Theater der Welt, which takes place every third year in a
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different German town and was conceived 30 years ago by
theatre scholar and art critic Ivan Nagel (under the umbrella
of ITI – International Theatre Institute), an idea that made
sense at the time, is now long outdated as a model for
finding new ways of transcultural cooperation – and
meanwhile it is even structurally counter-productive. The
festival, financed from municipal, public, and private sources,
spends relatively huge amounts of energy (money and
human resources) in order to set up various infrastructures
(such as offices, databanks, CI and internet display) for an
event that lasts three weeks at the most and eventually
moves on, moreover poorly archived and reflected upon,
mostly due to a lack of time and money. With a preparation
period of one and half years at the most, the involved artistic
management, now with a new team, must not only offer an
internationally top-class programme, but also conquer a
whole city, or even – as in the 2010 edition, on the occasion
of the mainstream event Cultural Capital Ruhr 2010 – two
cities (Essen and Mülheim an der Ruhr). On top of that, the
city’s tourist marketing counts on a capacity utilization of at
least 70 percent (and 90 would be better… of course…). In
2010 it was: 18 days, 2 cities, 32 ambitious projects at around
20 venues. But it could be worse. The grand failure of the
2002 edition, which united as many as 40 theatre
productions on 10 performance days in four cities
(Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn, Duisburg) and was, owing to this
fragmentation, unable to create any festival atmosphere in
the urban texture, revealed once again the absurdity of a
short-sighted cultural policy. As for the triennials like this
one, projects running for several years are excluded at the
outset anyway, since the new curators are unwilling to take
over the old burdens of their predecessors, preferring to
make a fresh start with fresh capital. Certainly, coproductions guarantee the long-term diffusion of a
production, but they cannot be structurally efficient either as
to the establishment of a different time culture at the
particular location.
Nevertheless, there are artists that resist this craving
for a one-time event, as shown by the example of the recent
documenta 12, where a listed artist was a cook who did not
want to be an artist at all and refused to cater for a mass
audience, since he knew what was good for him and his
cooking. And that good cooking needs time and space for
research and experimentation. In his “23 Principles”, Ferran
Adrià defined his processual model of gastronomic practice
that, in a continuous mixture of cultural practices, produces
continuous shifts of context and new meanings.
9. The information given off by a dish is enjoyed through the
senses; it is also enjoyed and interpreted by reflection.
11. The technique-concept search is the apex of the creative
pyramid.
12. Creation involves teamwork. In addition, research has
become consolidated as a new feature of the culinary
creative process.
21. Decontextualisation, irony, spectacle, performance are
completely legitimate, as long as they are not superficial
but respond to, or are closely bound up with, a process of
gastronomic reflection.
23. Knowledge and/or collaboration with experts from
different fields (gastronomic culture, history, industrial
design, etc.) is essential for progress in cooking. In
particular collaboration with the food industry and the
scientific world has brought about fundamental
advances. Sharing this knowledge among cooking
professionals has contributed to this evolution.
Ferran Adrià, “A Synthesis of elBulli cuisine”
– 23 Principles of El Bulli cooking
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and its “Cybermohalla” media project, in alternative
sponsoring projects in the fields of creativity, research, and
education – all year round and over multiple years. For
example, through access to free and open-source software,
distribution of copyleft publications, granting access to all
archives for researchers and practitioners, etc., or by
establishing a “robust platform committed to critical
discourse, freedom of expression and the exploration of the
relationship between human rights, civil liberties and the
efforts to ensure the viability of democratic ethic with regard
to media and information practices” (www.sarai.net).
A lot can be learned from thinkers and doers such as
these who keep augmenting their expert knowledge through
their interdisciplinary permeability and by practicing tireless
permanence. Especially by acknowledging the fact that they
have the ability to change and overcome the constructs of
reality whose creators have carelessly forfeited its
interpretative potential long ago.
They do exist, these holes in the fence, if one takes
these tasks seriously and ventures on the quest in exchange
with progressive thinkers and structures, I am totally sure of
that. The future generations of cultural agents will be
grateful.
43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people
feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free
agents if we're not free.
Bruce Mau, “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”
– 43 theses
A good example of sustainability and generating a
critical public beyond the event culture is the Sarai initiative,
existing in New Delhi since 1998. Founded as a coalition of
researchers, artists, and media practitioners (co-initiated by
the Raqs Media Collective, among others), Sarai sees itself as
a research-based and practice-oriented model that functions
in close connection to the disadvantaged parts of the city
and is involved, for example, through stipends, fellowships,
A lot can be learned from thinkers and doers who keep
augmenting their expert knowledge through their
interdisciplinary permeability and by practicing tireless
permanence.
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The Globe Theatre,
London
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Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
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At Least One-third of the Subject
Rabih Mroué
At least
One-third of
the Subject
Rabih Mroué
Translated from the Arabic by Ziad Nawfal
–1–
No Idea
–2–
Pure gain?
e as artists usually receive
invitations from abroad (or
locally) to present our work
there (or here), by way of
individuals who represent
organizations or artistic and
cultural institutions, or who
do not represent anyone but
themselves. They come to us, they contact us, they meet
with us and they leave… what are they looking for? I have no
idea. Maybe for something new, something different,
alternative, a new language, new blood… Or rather, to create
some ideas, to pose some questions related to certain
problems such as the artist’s relationship to power, or similar.
I have no idea. Maybe they are on the lookout for new
commodities for their respective markets, or for an Orient
they have heard so much about, an Orient they have missed
greatly, or… I really have no idea. My belief is that they all
have their own motivations and purposes. Each one of them
has his or her own reasons, desires and objectives. Really, I
have no idea.
They come to us, to Beirut or any other place, they come
to us from Beirut or from any other place, they contemplate
the artworks and meet with their makers, they write down
the details of the interview in notebooks, and they leave. And
we, in turn, we go on with our little lives and we forget, or we
pretend to have forgotten whom we have met.
Suddenly, one of us receives an invitation to participate,
while another doesn’t. Why? I really have no idea. Sometimes
I succeed in understanding the reasons, but most of the time
I don’t.
Sometimes I am commissioned to produce an artwork
revolving around a certain theme, which falls outside my
actual artistic, intellectual, and political concerns. I try to
avoid the assignment, but always find myself complying with
the curator’s desires. I prepare what is required from me, as a
pupil trying his best to satisfy his teacher. My friends and
colleagues accuse me of not knowing how to say “No”. I
always convince myself, however, that what was
accomplished despite my will is pure gain, since it would not
have seen the light of day if it wasn’t commissioned.
W
–3–
Ambassadors
I notice that I leave Beirut as an individual, but no sooner
have I left then I turn into a spokesman for the nation. I
become the emissary of Lebanon in spite of myself. I am
asked to voice an opinion and a clear position about several
political and cultural matters and others, such as suicide
bombings, U.S. policy in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli
struggle, the Lebanese wars, the role of Syria in Lebanon,
Iran, Islam and the West, theatre in Lebanon and the Arab
world, censorship, the role of the government in supporting
local art and culture, and other subjects. All of this, in a few
minutes, whose number does not exceed sixty at best.
–4–
What is to be done?
Once, a journalist warned the curators of the risks of working
with the same artists and intellectuals over a period of time
exceeding three years. He insisted that doing so would cause
the curator to face dangerous accusations, such as the
foundation of a cultural current with a single vision and one
artistic direction, which might influence the thoughts of the
young generations; or consecrating a gang of intellectuals
who do not perform their national or humane duties in paving
the way for a cultural awakening, which in turn would prevent
wars and aggression. He added that curators should work with
the greatest possible number of artists and intellectuals, in
order to avoid repetition, moodiness and subjectivity, and the
taking of sides for one artist against the other. All of these
matters contribute in causing new wounds within society,
rather than healing old ones. In order to avoid generalizations,
the journalist gave an example from Beirut, which included a
list of those artists whose names were repeated edition after
edition of the same event. And what a surprise, my name was
mentioned in his accusatory list, which included more or less
ten names. Oh! What is to be done?
–5–
The first one and last
Once I was given the opportunity to play the role of curator,
which I agreed to. In my introduction to the audience, I wrote
the following:
First, let me introduce myself: my name is Rabih Mroué
and I am the curator of this event. To say I am a curator
sounds strange to my ears, since this event is my first one, and
I hope the last.
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Rabih Mroué
I am an artist myself, and to be honest it is not an easy
task to be in a position where I have to select from the many
works that were made by other artists, who happen to be my
colleagues and friends. I never thought that I would play this
role, and have the authority to decide what to include and
what to exclude. And this is why I say that this could be the
last time I do it, as I hate to be in this position.
(…)
In fact, there are more than 20 artists and intellectuals
who have travelled from Beirut to Berlin, neither to represent
Beirut, nor to represent the cultural situation in Beirut. Of
course we have not come here to teach you about the
political situation in our country, or even to give you an idea
of what is going on there. Actually, we are here as individuals;
each one of us brings her/his own questions and her/his own
individual angst; each one of us represents her or himself. We
have taken the advantage of our presence here in an attempt
to create a distance between ourselves and the region we
came from, an attempt to better understand the situation
there, and consequently to create words and images, far
removed from deterministic political mobilizations and from
canonical thoughts and texts readymade for media
consumption. It is an attempt to question once again what is
already taken for granted in a country and in a world, which
constantly require us to declare our affiliations without
questioning, and relentlessly pressure us to radically align
ourselves with one side against another.
That is why, you as spectators, audience and visitors
should not expect to see works and hear talks that will
provide you with an “understanding”. Because we are here
with our complexities and peculiarities and we are not going
to simplify them or explain anything for you, in order for
them to become “understandable”. We are aware that you
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At Least One-third of the Subject
Rabih Mroué
yourselves will not expect us to behave as such, because it
would turn this meeting into an interaction between
students and teachers, while we are here to share our
thoughts and concerns with you, to think and reflect upon
them with you, to debate and discuss the complexities and
peculiarities of the situation with you.
In fact, this is just an invitation to incomprehension, and
as Jalal Toufic says, a “subtle and intelligent incomprehension.
For it is part of the mission of artists and intellectuals to
produce works that show their subtle and intelligent
incomprehension”.
–6–
Delayed introduction
Your question on curating made me discover the extent to
which I play the part of the innocent bystander. I realized
that I know very little about the subject; my knowledge
about curators comes from my role as an artist, and the
artist/curator relationship. As for what happens before and
after, it seems to me that artists do not attempt to
understand how these aspects function. As if it is not our
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concern. For example, how do curators go about securing
funds? And what is required from them in return? On what
basis do the sponsors agree? On what basis do the curators
agree? And once the money is spent and we take our fee,
what do they have to prove to their sponsors? How do
agendas function? What is the reason for focusing on one
region of the world rather than another, on one topic rather
than another? Why do we get invited one day, and forgotten
about the next? How do these things work? What plays the
bigger part: politics, ideologies, culture, propaganda, market
strategies, or all of these at once? And who has the biggest
influence? Curators or sponsors? There is a multitude of
questions on this subject, and on the conflict of authorities
between curators and the money-holders on one hand, and
curators and the artists on the other. It seems to me that
curators stand on shaky ground, caught between power and
art. There are indeed many questions, and the only thing I
can say now is that I am ignorant about at least two-thirds
of the subject. What I do know is that the artist should know,
and needs to learn more, be implicated and responsible, and
leave this pretentious innocence behind.
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E-Mail to
a Curator
An introduction to
“The Curators’ Piece”
Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
Translated from the Croatian by Una Bauer
Zagreb, 10 June 2009
A
Dear Sven Åge Birkeland,
89
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E-Mail to a Curator
Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
few days ago we sent you an e-mail with the
initial proposal for The Curators’ Piece which
we briefly discussed in Goldegg last month. As
you noticed correctly, the project is weirdly
constructed, but also very cool. We are happy
that you are interested in it. This time we are
writing to you to further clarify our motives
and actions. Therefore, we will try to be as
precise as possible, knowing that an e-mail is not the best
medium for detailed explanations (especially since we know that
curators receive hundreds of e-mails like this from artists).
The Curators’ Piece is a project we are developing with
chosen performing arts curators in order to present it at their
festivals or venues in the form of a stage show. The curator
takes part in the performance as a performer. Relying on the
relations between the artists, the curators and the audience,
the project deals with the production of contemporary performing
arts and the possibility of art’s influence on today’s society.
We conceive it as a challenge to the art. Why art? What is it
today? How does it get produced? Who are the artists? Who are
the curators? Who is the audience? What can art do and what is
the role of the artist, the curator and the audience in it?
These are the key questions out of which the fictional material
of the performance is composed. We invite curators we feel are
relevant for the shaping of today’s landscape of contemporary
performing arts. We invite them by e-mail (the way we are
inviting you just now). The project consists of the research
phase and production phase. After the initial e-mail, and if the
curator is interested in the project, we enter into the research
phase. The work in the research phase is individual, with one
curator at a time. We use this phase to prepare the performance
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Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
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Curating Performing Arts
– and – timewise, we are planning on finishing the research
phase by the end of 2010. In the research phase, we visit the
curator at his or her place of work, or we follow him or her on
a business trip. By getting information on his or her work, we
are also getting to know the context he is engaged with. We use
the research phase to articulate the materials that are the
starting point for work on the performance.
The production phase and the premiere are planned for 2011.
The production process is developed through weekend residencies,
starting in PS122 in New York and finishing in o espaco do
tempo, Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal where we meet and work with the
chosen curators. In this phase, the main aim is to find the
right strategies for the performance and to establish a
relationship between the audiences, curators-performers and us.
The invited curators are also the co-producers of the show. Five
to seven curators perform in the piece. It will premiere and be
shown at their festivals and in their production houses.
Other organizations and festivals wishing to support the
project could be involved too, but there is enough time to talk
about those possibilities later.
We would now like to answer a couple of questions that you asked
in your previous e-mail. The first and the key question: Why
curators?
While the artist and the audience have found their place in
the recent discourse and practice of performing arts, the
curator has been left behind, and his work, although very
important, has remained invisible. Other than a few articles,
there is no publication on the work of the curator in the
performing arts. This seems unbelievable, especially knowing
that it is impossible to talk about the production of the arts
today without taking into account its key figures.
In that sense, we are also wondering, just like you, how is
it possible that proposals and invitations for collaboration on
artistic projects never come from an artist, but always from a
curator, and we, as you, don’t know the answer. One of the aims
of this project is to make that transparent.
You asked: How did you select the curators? On the one side,
there is the curator’s engagement and interest in contemporary
art. What is also important for us is the curator’s visibility
and long-term presence on the scene. There is also the influence
of his or her work in the field of performing arts.
Additionally, it is quite relevant where the curator comes from
– since if he or she is working in the context of developed
economies (Western Europe and North America), he or she is
shaping the cutting-edge scene and influencing other scenes in
the world more than others. The courage of the curator to take
part in this project with its different possible solutions
rather than the usual procedures of selection and production of
an artistic work is crucial. In the end, we try to choose
curators whose programs correspond to our own artistic interest
and who closely collaborate with artists.
You were recommended to us by many people because of your
dedication and long-term vision in creating BIT Teatergarasjen
and because you ensured its influence on the performing arts in
the Nordic region and in Europe.
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E-Mail to a Curator
Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
The other curators who join the project will be mentioned on
our web page. Here is the link: www.curatorspiece.net. We plan
on publishing the materials from the research phase of the
project there. What we need for the beginning is your short CV
and three photographs that you think best represent you.
Your question: Is it by chance that the project is initiated
by two young female artists from the Balkans, penetrating the
Western European market and suggesting such a radical concept?
Is that also a part of the project? surprised us. We hadn’t
thought about that. It is interesting that the perception of the
curator and that of the artist differ. It might also be true, as
you said, that a male artist would construct the project
differently. We tried to imagine what it would look like... Of
course, emphasizing these details opens up the possibility for
the promotion of The Curators’ Piece – but also puts the project
in great danger. These labels might help short-term, but are
also disadvantageous for us (a young unknown artist is hardly an
advantage for a renowned festival and any curator to accept the
project).
Another question, one that Christine Peters already asked in
one of her e-mails, and that you touched upon too is: What is
your artistic motivation? Why now? What is at stake? In order to
answer these questions we need to delve deeper, because the key
to our motivation is in the question: Why do we make art today?
We can’t be oblivious to the fact that art production isn’t
happening in a vacuum, separated from the concrete economic and
political situation. Art production is a production like any
other. Still, there is a reason why we still decide to make art
today. Basically, unlike any other production field, art has the
possibility to reflect its own production and the relations that
were set up by it. That ability for self-reflection opens a path
to many inversions and for possibilities of reconfiguration.
What we are interested in is to find a way in which theatre
today can be political. When we are talking about our interest
in the political, we are talking about our interest in the
phenomenon of labour, its premises, shapes, and, most of all:
its consequences. The labour that we are interested in is
primarily our own labour in the field of art. With this project
we open up the possibilities for an action in our own ‘factory’.
The Curators’ Piece re-directs the focus to the very production
of the artistic work, opens up a field for new thoughts and ways
of perceiving performing arts.
We have now really departed from the concrete proposal,
which is the invitation for the research phase of the project.
Please find more about it in the attachment. We are hoping that
you will be just as interested as you were in our initial
conversation.
We are looking forward to the possibility of further
collaboration and our work on the performance.
Cheers!
Petra and Tea
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E-Mail to a Curator
Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Attachment:
The preparation phase of “The Curators’ Piece”
In order to define the role of the curator in The Curators’ Piece, we first need
to introduce ourselves and get to know the specific curator involved in the
project.
Therefore we propose an initial “zero” phase of work, which is the
preliminary, preparatory phase of the project, necessary for entering the
later, production phase.
In the research phase, we will deal with the role of the curator in the
production of performing arts and his responsibility and influence on what
art today can or cannot offer to society. We will be engaged with the
constitutive segments of the curator’s work: the moments of selection,
decision-making, contextualizing and communication (e.g. with the artists,
collaborators, employees, other curators, politicians, board, etc.). We will gain
additional insight into the curator’s job through a series of conversations
with his or her collaborators, audience members, artists and critics.
We will follow the schedule of selected activities accompanied by
conversations with the curators. These activities and talks will help us focus
on some of the more specific topics around which the frame for the
performance (the schedule written below could be filled along the way with
additional activities we both find interesting to research) will be formed.
Moreover, during our stay, the curator will get to know us better, he or
she will become familiar with our artistic procedures and will have a clearer
picture on how we will structure the rehearsal and production phase (e.g.
who the curators involved in the performance will be, what the topics will be,
the duration and audience set-ups, how the stage set-up will look like and
which stage activities of the final performance we intend to establish).
The date for the first meeting could be any week from January to June
2010 – preferably in May 2010.
Other than travel costs, per diems and accommodation for two artists
in Bergen that we kindly ask the curator to cover for us, no other fees will be
sought in this preparatory phase.
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the preparation phase – detailed schedule
E-Mail to a Curator
Tea Tupajić & Petra Zanki
sunday
day one
Arrival in the afternoon. Meeting with the curator in an informal atmosphere.
The curator provides us with a detailed list of things he did the day before –
the task has been sent to the curator by e-mail the day before our arrival.
Not recorded.
monday
day two
Morning: (3 hrs.) Meeting with the curator in his working space: documented
series of talks on art-related subjects translated into video and audio
recordings. Quiet room required (e.g. space for team meetings or breaks).
tuesday
day three
Morning: (2 hrs.) Meeting the curator in his working space: on choice,
selection & contextualization – video & audio recordings of selected games
and tasks. Quiet room required (e.g. space for team meetings or breaks).
Afternoon: (1 hr). Meeting with the curator in an informal space (bar, café,
etc.): series of talks on life-related subjects translated into audio recordings,
images and writings.
wednesday day four
(3 hrs.) Individual interviews with collaborators (private room required):
audio recordings. (1 hr.) Meeting with the spectator of BIT Teatergarasjen:
audio recording. Evening: Viewing performance of curator’s choice. (optional)
After the performance, discussion with the curator on the choice of the
performance and the performance itself.
thursday
day five
(2 hrs.) Talk with the curator: getting to know his work in a historical
perspective, including his present and future work. Becoming familiar with
his projects, manifestations and events he has organized before his
involvement with his current curatorial position.
(1 hr.) Office tour: Getting to know the place where the curator works and the
structures that the curator collaborates with – the city, the state and within
Europe (by getting information from the curator). Getting to know the board
involved in the decision-making. Getting to know the projects,
manifestations and events the curator organizes at the place of his actual
responsibility and plans for the near future.
An evening with the curator: Viewing performance of curator’s choice.
(optional). After the performance, discussion with the curator on the choice
of the performance and the performance itself.
friday
day six
(2 hrs.) Inversion of the situation – the curator has the opportunity to ask us
private & project related questions. This session is video and audio recorded.
Quiet space required.
(2 hrs.) Meeting the artists of BIT –Teatergarasjen: video recording in a
theatre space or studio.
saturday
day seven
Morning: (artists alone): Conceptualization of the basis for the performance.
Discussing the concept & the frames for the structure of the production
phase.
Afternoon: (2 hrs.) Talk with the curator – evaluation of the last week.
Presenting the idea with concrete stage frame, dates & costs. Scheduling the
next meeting.
Evening: Last dinner in an informal atmosphere. Not recorded.
sunday
day eight
Departure.
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Trappers Creek,
Alaska
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Empty Stages
Photographs by Tim Etchells & Hugo Glendinning
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Curators’
Glossary
Frakcija #55
Curating
Performing Arts
Curators’
Artist-Curator
My artistic and curatorial works clearly affect
each other. If I ask myself why I do what I do,
how I do it and for what, I also ask the
spectator why they come, for what, who
they are, what do they want, what they like
and why they like it.
These questions can be formulised within
a piece or a project but only a context can
canalise all this information, energy and
repercussions. I am interested in transferring
from my artistic practices to the curatorial
ones – experimentation, new modes of
relations, visualization of the process and
production, discourse in progress, criticism,
flexibility, humour, joy of working, politic
evolvement, generosity, curiosity...
When I started to curate, I thought about
so many interesting projects, initiatives,
pieces, artists that together could transform
what didn’t work in the performing arts
scene. That there was an institution that
supported my initiative gave us the
opportunity to end many years of emptiness,
to stop making claims and to present us as a
reality. When I say us I am talking about
many artists who cannot be classified within
the institutions or conventional market
because these agencies are too big and not
flexible enough. If we do nothing, the market
will always condition the products, and it is
sad to think that many projects can only
exist in the form of a 60-square metre piece
which is made in two or three months.
Simply boring!
Since I organise In-Presentable, I see a lot
of artists collaborating in Madrid, sharing
methodologies and practices and working
hard together. I also see a discourse and
criticism shared. As a curator you can build a
context where everybody can use their
knowledge and share it towards experiencing
new situations. Situations that we build
together because we want to, not because
they are the only option.
We need to know more, be more
conscious, have more experience, more
emotions, more intensity, more of everything. When I initiate or share a project I like
to feel that we want to work, that we know
why we are opening new places, why we are
getting overexcited and to say again; let’s
fucking do it! Even if we don’t know yet what
we have to do.
Juan Domínguez is a performer and
choreographer. Since 2003 he is artistic director
of the festival In-Presentable/La Casa Encendida
in Madrid.
Audience
When I think of an audience, I think of them
as I have during my career as a theatre artist.
At times they are my friends. At times they
are colleagues. But most often, they are
anonymous – out there in the darkness in
the auditorium. Do I feel obliged to consider
them as part of the equation, part of what I
do in my practice as a curator? Yes.
I see the act of curation as a conversation.
It can take many forms, but ultimately, it
must be a true and legitimate conversation. I
need to consider the audience as someone I
wish to speak to, and perhaps more
importantly, with. To do that, I also need to
listen to them. I need to consider the
reception and impact of the programming. I
must never assume that they will, or should,
accept and applaud everything we choose to
program.
In North America the relationship to
audiences is at the forefront of anything one
undertakes as a curator in the performing
arts. Festivals such as PuSh operate within a
private/public funding context where the
size of one’s audience is a key “measurable”
of success, box office revenue is a significant
factor of survival. Is this pressure souldestroying? I would cease to be a curator if I
didn’t believe there was a possible dialectic
between work that is readily accessible, with
work that challenges an audience’s
expectations – their worldview. PuSh was
born out a belief that we could build a new
audience for contemporary performing arts
in Vancouver by encouraging existing
isolated audiences to experience work that
they would have previously had no interest
in.
This relationship between audience and
curation is not frozen in time. It is dynamic,
always changing and evolving. There is
shared history, a sense of give and take. This
dynamic, along with the various outreach
and educational efforts of post-performance
talkbacks, artist talks, curatorial statements
and the like, is extremely important; it can
play a key role in an audience’s reception of a
work that is particularly demanding.
Is there a work that we simply can’t
consider? Certainly. The perils of audience
risk are as tangible a reality as financial risk.
Yet, the relationship between a curator and
an audience is never wholly subservient, nor
dictatorial. The operative word is “respect.”
To respect an audience is to demand their
attention, to challenge them, but to also ask
of their openness. My role as a curator is to
create context, to provide opportunities for
audiences to appreciate the impulses from
which the work was created. Ultimately, an
audience member may wish to choose to
dismiss a work, but if they have no respect
for PuSh having chosen it, then I have not
done my job.
Norman Armour is an actor, director, producer
and interdisciplinary artist. He is the executive
director of the international performing arts
festival PuSH in Vancouver, Canada.
Bearing Up
What does it mean to be a curator in Central
Europe these days? Why do our choices differ
so much from the others? Why do I seem less
courageous than my Western European
colleagues? We had a different history for
forty years. We lived behind a wall that
changed so much the meaning of life, the
meaning of the 60s, the meaning of The
Beatles’ White Album, the meaning of Pink
Floyd’s The Wall. We lived in a different
history where the words, the art product
possessed another comprehension.
I am more and more aware of the fact
that I have a specific role and mission to
work in Budapest, and my Central European
colleagues are in a similar situation. I have to
think and decide and represent alone, being a
maverick in the context I work in.
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Glossary
97
A subjective short guide
through the terminology
of curating:
Danjel Andersson,
Norman Armour,
Vincent Baudriller,
Sven Åge Birkeland,
Tom Bonte,
Marie Collin,
Curators’
Lane Czaplinski,
Glossary
Sally De Kunst,
Zvonimir Dobrović,
Juan Domínguez,
Silvia Fanti,
Vallejo Gantner,
Sigrid Gareis,
Matthias von Hartz,
Stefan Hilterhaus,
Veronica Kaup-Hasler,
Frie Leysen,
Matthias Lilienthal,
Nayse Lopez,
Barbara Raes,
Christophe Slagmuylder,
Frakcija #55
György Szabó,
Curating
Performing Arts
Annemie Vanackere,
Barbara Van Lindt &
Gordana Vnuk
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I have to span the historical gap – that
gets even larger through the distance from
the big art capitals with their complex,
financially strong institutional structures and
progressive profiles. The pace of art is much
faster in London, Paris and New York; other
cities cannot keep up with this rhythm of
presentation in quality and quantity. We
don’t have this broad international mass of
spectators, this crowd of consumers that is
well-educated and eager to follow the new
trends. Our audience is much more
segmented and it is much smaller. This
deprives us from opening a bold dialogue
with cutting edge, avant-garde trends.
For example: In the last five years I made
several attempts to present recent
tendencies in contemporary dance. But,
neither the public nor the critics were even
willing to try to comprehend the new
aesthetics. Where does this resistance come
from? My answer is simple: Whatever kind of
work is successful becomes the fashion
immediately. I have experienced so far that
this unsatisfying state of aesthetic norms
and fashions hinders the openness of the
perception of new works.
It is our obligation to defy our
underprivileged circumstances. We cannot
give up acting locally. Artists and curators
cannot exist without an audience, since our
work depends on public resources. However,
if we want to stay close to the tendencies of
the world, we have to raise money and fight
for the strong political and professional
support that we miss so often: political and
professional provincialism is the largest
threat to our efforts. But we still remember
the joyful periods when history provided
opportunities and we felt the fresh wind of
the new time. At the end of the 80s we were
very close to the world. And I hope we will
soon be again.
György Szabó is managing director of Trafó, an
interdisciplinary venue for contemporary art in
Budapest.
Choice
1. How is it made
Curating a festival is about making choices
and defining a palette. Every selected project
must find a sort of relevance inside of this
palette.
To be able to make these choices we first
have to define a general line. I defend a
frame that is rather open and flexible. No
theme or strong conceptual lines in advance.
They will occur during the selection-process,
by listening to the proposals of the artists, to
their thoughts, dreams, desires and visions.
The first choices are made well in advance
since I am curating a festival which produces
and coproduces a lot of new works. First
come mainly the creations that we discuss
with artists we know from before. We have
often already collaborated with them; we
have trust in the potentiality of their
practice. Without already knowing what the
next festival will look like, only by being
convinced by the project itself. These first
choices form a kind of spine for the whole
program.
The second phase can be compared to a
puzzle. While the first pieces are loosely and
randomly assembled, the pieces that still
have to come must fit into the puzzle and
give it a structure. By assembling the first
choices we start to see possible images
emerging. Some lines or frames appear and
make the choices around the “spine” more
oriented, influenced and balanced.
Let’s be more concrete. How do we make
these choices? At the beginning I can be
quite open, I can use very different kinds of
venues in the city, theatres or public squares,
black boxes or white cubes. I have, in theory,
no limitations concerning the format of the
work, the discipline, the level of recognition
of the artists. But then we have to reduce
and make the theory correspond to practical
aspects: financial, social, technical, logistical.
The main decision is already what we are
going to see, where we will travel: going to
unknown places and also attending places of
reference. Trying artists we’ve never heard of
2. What does it mean
Talking about relevance, the question is:
relevant to what? These choices are definitely
not a portrait of me, or what I consider to be
interesting, contemporary and representative. They are capable of defining, to me and
to some extent to many different others, the
point where we are today, a certain Zeitgeist
which can be perceived and intuitively
understood by the individuals I try to
convince to encounter the work presented.
Christophe Slagmuylder joined the
Kunstenfestivaldesarts (KFDA) staff in 2002 and
worked on the festival programming with the
artistic director Frie Leysen. Since 2006 he is the
festival’s artistic director.
Compromise
Of course: our work, as producer, is to let the
vision of an artist become true and to keep
compromises as far away as possible. But in
the end the work has to become reality and
this reality might also bring confrontations
with the budget or social laws for example.
So we also have to negotiate solutions. And
which compromise might be acceptable for
the artist.
Avignon is not just a festival. In France it
plays a highly symbolic role as a historical
place but also as a place that is supposed to
preserve a certain idea of culture. The Palais
du Papes is for sure the most charged
theatre place in France – and it fits an
audience of 2000 people. To invite artists like
Romeo Castellucci or Christoph Marthaler to
create works here was a big challenge, since
for most people the shows in the palace
equal the whole festival. They don’t see any
others and most of them want a different
kind of theatre: text theatre, classical
theatre, repertory theatre… For me it was
very important from the beginning that the
palace be a place for creation and artistic
adventure. Because here you can challenge
and perhaps change the mind of a broader
audience – and of politicians. On the other
hand, an artist has to understand what it
means to work here in terms of symbolic and
political implications, but also in terms of the
size of the audience.
So we had our share of scandals, of
attacks by politics: for example, Woyzeck by
Thomas Ostermeier was the first play in a
foreign language in the palace. And that in
German! Or Jan Fabre with explicit nudity in a
Catholic college.... But only when it comes to
public space do I need the agreement of the
mayor, such as with an installation in 2004
when Julian Rosefeldt wanted to install the
question “Ça va durer longtemps? (This will
last for a long time?)” in big letters on the palace during the mass artists’ strike. The mayor
was afraid it could be read as a critique of the
Catholic Church. In the end we were allowed
to use the sentence without the question
mark – which I consider even stronger.
Compared to visual arts, compromises are
inherent in the performing arts: they are
much more part of the social and economic
realities; they involve more people and
infrastructure; they are more difficult to
manoeuvre.
As much as I fight for more artistic
freedom and for less compromise, I am also
responsible for the image of the festival, for
its future. And not only in France – the
political and economical situation is getting
worse – accompanied by more and more
populism. The fight for less compromise will
not become easier.
From a conversation with Vincent Baudriller,
director of the Festival d’Avignon since 2004.
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before and following the work of important
figures. And then I have to like it, love it, be
convinced by it; I will have to defend it. But
on the other hand, there is the context
where I will present it. It has to function
within a corpus of other works and it must
be relevant for the people who will see it. I
will have to share it, to share my enthusiasm
and convictions with others, many others,
many different others.
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Performing Arts
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Development
And one day that tumultuous need is simply
there: Get out! Take the plunge! It is a
yearning for being held back, for nondevelopment, for coming to a standstill ...
(Robert Musil)
Space for development has long since
become a constant in the well-oiled event
machinery. No festival or hardly any venue
today is without its think tanks, residencies
and symposium programmes. Rules, topics,
exhibitions guarantee future-proof
processes. They follow social expectations
and shift current issues into the focus of
public interest. But how can the promise of
chronologically traceable developments be
combined with those entanglements, breaks,
crashes, crises and grotesques that are
inherent in art?
Where is the kairos, the dedication to that
one supreme moment that plunges us into
the unexpected? That moment which falls
out of time and leads us to spaces created
within the cracks, to spaces of speculation,
indecision, ambiguity and uncertainty.
Spaces that put their very sovereignty and
purpose on the line. Spaces that don’t want
to know in advance. Spaces of reflection that
expose their own motivations and invite you
to lose yourself. Spaces that change in a
process with their user, but still remain
unchanged. Confident spaces which make
the doctrines of reality real. Spaces of
possibility rather than function. Spaces with
their own definition of time. Effectively,
spaces of development. Spaces that have the
courage to accept the risk to lose all – just
like art itself.
How can we forge a pathway towards
finding, protecting or even creating these
spaces? Has the time perhaps come for
longer established relevant centres of
development and presentation to fundamentally question their own operating
mechanisms just as art itself continually
does?
Who actually defines success? Which
criteria for evaluation empower functional
structures rather than artistic potentials?
And what is the currency we calculate in?
If the resulting system is oriented almost
exclusively towards media responses,
audience numbers and the key discussion
makers who position and then display
themes, reputations and artists like trophies,
then it is evident that new structures and
spaces are called for that follow a different,
unexpected and autonomous logic and,
essentially, develop their own criteria for
legitimation and new potentials.
Out with the old corset and logic of
society’s expectations; in with structures
that allow art to be as intangible, as
unexpected, as oppositional, as undeveloped,
as unpredictable and as unrewarding as it
needs to be to unfold its inherent force. To
work towards all this now, to maintain claim
to it, could be reason enough to Take the
plunge!
Stefan Hilterhaus worked as a boatbuilder,
performer and choreographer before he became
the artistic director of Tanzlandschaft Ruhr in
1998 and of PACT Zollverein in 2002.
Drive
I’ve had my share of threats and gossip.
There have been periods when my friends
avoided me like the plague. On several
occasions, politicians, the press and
television demanded that the theatre be
shut down. Of course, it’s always the same
stuff provoking these reactions; sex, politics
and religion. However all the noise and
struggle comes hand in hand with a stream
of warmth from a wide range of people, and
brave artists with sometimes brilliant artistic
achievements, life goes on like this. Art is
worth bleeding for.
My project as a curator – on the one
hand, well planned artistic work and
strategic moves, while on the other hand,
noisy, chaotic and unexpected events as
exciting side effects – is after all a humanistic
project. It’s not really about art. Our
Sven Åge Birkeland is artistic director of BIT
Teatergarasjen in Bergen, the dance biannual
Oktoberdans and the theatre biannual Meteor.
East
East as a geographical location, as an
economic position, as an idea, as an artistic
background and, finally, East as a destiny. I
am trying to question those defining aspects
of the East with the help of two festivals.
Queer Zagreb is one: this is its eighth year,
and it is still both aesthetically and politically
relevant. The term ‘queer’ is a Western
notion, where it is exclusively related to
minority identities such as homosexuality
and gender difference. However, once
transplanted to the East, it gained a new
meaning, both in terms of its content, and its
practice. The space of social and political
transition redefined it and redirected it
towards an understanding which includes a
distance from any set of norms, towards the
area of the unknown, new, towards the
personal, public and artistic experiment.
During transitional times, culture
concentrated on safeguarding positions, on
institutions, and on representation and
reproduction. When the notion of queer is
introduced into a transitional cultural
context and presented as a move away from
the norm and from a standardized cultural
practice, and once its meaning is widened
according to the givens of a local and
regional social context burdened with
patriarchy, strict traditional values and other
normativities, queer becomes an interesting
safe space for a much wider circle of
meanings than in the West.
I believe that this narrow Western
understanding of queer is precisely the
reason why Queer Zagreb is the only festival
today with this program orientation in
Europe, not because queer as art wouldn’t be
interesting to the West. This late arrival to
the East enabled the idea of queer to
become more contemporary and it is now
the right time for it to be presented back to
the West, in its wider meaning.
This claim brings us to my second
curatorial project, the Perforations festival.
Unlike with Queer Zagreb, East isn’t its
advantage. Perforations deals with the East
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contribution from this rather marginal field
of society, sometimes small, naive and
inexperienced, but certainly always with an
edge, can change lives. We, living and acting
today, can’t afford to walk in others’
footsteps. Our duty is to dare, search for new
material, original perspectives and
adventurous knowledge, and we aim to
address these basic parameters on a daily
basis. I really like curators who combine
knowledge and skills with a strong personal
touch and approach, who stride beyond the
trodden path. Within such a practice, the
artist needs to supply knowledge, attitude,
an exciting artistic idea, ability to deliver and
a budget. We are after all talking about
collaboration and respect that goes both
ways.
My responsibility as a curator isn’t
towards transitional politicians, structures,
power-games or glamour; my focus is on the
artist and the audience. I care about the
artist because it’s the artist who makes the
world go round, and makes me tick. I care
about the audience because it’s a privilege to
have one. That’s why I work and act within
an art discourse.
Walking to my office in the rain, I’m
thinking why on earth Bergen? My answer is
often its intimacy, its urge to be
international, to create new material as well
as maintain tradition, and my seasons are
based on ongoing processes. I want to
present a full 12 course meal starting with
basic ingredients, in a process that allows
luxuries to fall into place (tasty bombs,
harmonious additions, time to breathe...).
Life is short, and switching metaphor from
food to football; I’ll continue working as
Zidane, not a Rooney nor a Materazzi.
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in a more direct way, because the whole
festival is programmatically focused
exclusively on the Balkan region. The aim of
the festival is to compensate for the long
term neglect of the most active art scene in
the region – an independent and noninstitutional scene which resulted in
segmentation and dispersal, a certain
closeness and weak visibility of that scene. In
that context, Perforations seems like a selfunderstandable project, however its
realization meets specific neuralgic points of
the Eastern context – the non-existence of a
proper infrastructure, the lack of
communication between the institutions and
the independent scene, the lack of funding,
weak regional connections. My position of
curator has always been marked by the
creation of a new space that enables me to
engage with programs – whether it is an
opening of an extended space for ‘queer’, or
connecting the institutions and
organizations of the independent scene with
the aim of creating a platform for
collaboration as a part of Perforations. In
other words, there is always something on
the boil in the East – which I guess makes me
a boiling hot curator.
translation una bauer
Zvonimir Dobrović is artistic director of the
Queer Zagreb festival in Zagreb and the
Perforacije/Perforations festival (Zagreb, Rijeka,
Dubrovnik).
Frakcija #55
Curating
Performing Arts
Education
The programmer has become a key figure
within the professionalized and institutionalized field of venues, art centres, festivals,
production houses... You could aspire to
become a programmer, you are already quite
informed and thus... quite close to your goal.
How to become a performing arts
curator? Some study theatre science,
philosophy, arts history, literature, some
have been theatre practitioners before;
hardly anyone starts the job without
experience in the field. Volunteering, being a
bartender in a theatre foyer, working as a
critic, technician, production assistant...
allows one to gain insights into the needs of
artists and audiences and generates an
increased sensibility for the dynamics behind
‘showing a performance’. This peripheral
experience, which includes watching
performances and how artistic directors and
programmers do it, was – up until now – the
only way to educate yourself. To learn that...
(there are no) 50 ways to make a
programme.
Let’s say there are a couple of principles:
the thematical, the geographical, the (multi)
disciplinary, the artist-driven, the audiencedriven, the context- or event-driven
programming. A festival is different than a
season; (co)producing demands other
circumstances than presenting. And there is
a whole range between the shopper and the
embedded programmer.
Every artistic mission, every house, town
or country is different and creates a very
particular mix of artistic desires and prosaic
parameters.
Anyone feel like setting up a Master of
Performing Arts Programming?
You could organize some basic
performing arts history courses, group
dynamics workshops, invite professional
fundraisers for a seminar and then? Let your
students write concepts for festivals they
cannot realize? Or send them as interns to
festivals, theatres and venues?
In this case, I don’t believe in education as
simulation. This job is not about applying
knowledge; it is about tuning in to all aspects
of the reality you have to cope with. No art
student at a Masters level ever simulates at
the academy: he or she makes things. Makes
mistakes.
The danger of setting up this kind of
educational programme is that the job gets
formatised, objectivised, pre-determined. A
new generation of programmers, to
paraphrase Heiner Goebbels, can decide to
stop doing things.
Barbara Van Lindt founded the theatre
laboratory Gasthuis in Amsterdam and was
director of wp Zimmer. After working as a
programmer for Kunstenfestivaldesarts in
Brussels, she became managing director of
DasArts- Master of Theatre in Amsterdam.
Euro-centrism
Euro-centrism is really this bizarre notion
that the world pays a lot more attention to
Europe than it really does. Of course the
whole “this is what is hot in Paris now” idea
has been there for ages, much before LeviStrauss came and studied the Brazilian
Indians for years apparently to better
understand Rousseau (maybe I don’t speak
enough French, pardon). I was asked to write
something personal on this notion (I suppose
because I am not European, most of the
time).
Euro-centrism, as a post-colonial
dispositive (can we still use dispositive?) was
key to understanding how dramaturgy
canons and aesthetics that, well, colonized
most of the world’s stages, galleries and
underground rehearsal spaces in the last
century. Anyone knows the forces that push
foreign ministry policies and money around
international exchange programs and
festivals all over the world. This is the awful
truth for curators outside Europe: because of
the travel money, European subsidized
companies are cheap (for us). The less wellfunded project you have in Latin America or
Africa, the more European companies I see in
it. Sometimes the work is also good.
Last week, in a meeting of the South
American Network of Dance in Salvador, I
heard that in Bolivia there is no more public
money to non-indigenous forms of dance.
Contemporary there means, apparently,
Europe. But most European curators I speak
to think Europe is dead and the new exciting
artists come from the rest of the world,
preferably with indigenous backgrounds. I
guess nobody is ever happy. Money aside, of
course the European festival circuit still
legitimates certain logics and aesthetics.
That is the real question and most pieces I
have seen recently from Brazil, Latin America
and Africa are repeating the dance that has
been accepted in Europe in the last decade.
But some of them do that brilliantly. And my
European colleagues don’t have a different
story to tell.
Can we program a really honest (can we
still use honest?) festival when we have to
deal with the big picture of post-colonial
reassessment? Is it so different to make an
independent, multi-layered international
festival outside Europe? Is it euro-centric for
an international curator to go to Europe to
look for good work? Is it okay for German
audiences to enjoy a very bad dance piece
made on some distant island by native
dancers? Is it okay to see well-funded
western European dancers making a studio
piece that will only be seen by their friends? I
really don’t recognize what I do in curators
who have no interest in whatever is out of
reach by a TGV, but neither in the ones who
do festivals called “Focus France” in some
African city.
I have no answers, just a growing bitter
taste. I keep remembering a line from the
Brazilian/North-American theatre maker
Ricky Seabra in his solo Empire – love to love
you baby, explaining his double citizenship
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We might agree though that programming practices can and must evolve.
Examples: balancing more between profiling
and servicing an artistic community.
Exploring 50 ways to say no and why: a more
transparent and explicit communication
towards solicitating artists. Getting over the
idea of exclusivity: it ties up artists and is
very eco unfriendly.
In arts education, it is said students learn
most from their peers. I agree. Developing
the art of programming can only be done by
an open exchange between colleagues.
Anyone feel like setting up a new network, a
new think tank, a working group, a dialogue
series, an issue of a magazine? Anyone?
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situation and why he will be trashing the US
that evening: “From now on, when I say we, I
mean the rest of the world”.
Nayse Lopez is a journalist and dance critic.
Since 2005 she is artistic director, alongside
Eduardo Bonito, of the Panorama Festival in Rio
de Janeiro. She is also general editor of the dance
and performance portal www.idanca.net.
Far Out
“The west is the best, get here and we’ll
do the rest.” – The Doors
People often ask me about being a
performance curator in such a far off place as
Seattle, Washington. “You must feel isolated,”
they all say.
Isolated from what? Europe? The internet
and air travel allows me to copy, I mean,
study the programming at the Kunstenfestival des Arts and Avignon, and many of
the artists here in town can dance standing
still with the best non-danseurs in France.
Isolated from New York? Gotham is all
about designer pizza with poached eggs and
lemongrass popsicles; performance art there
is mostly a relic of the 60’s and 70’s, and is
more likely to occur at MoMA or the
Guggenheim than downtown.
The Northwest has been a cultural
hotbed for quite awhile, boasting residents
like Merce, Kurt, Jimi and Gus at one point or
another. Interstate 5 forms a creative
corridor in the region, connecting Seattle to
Vancouver, B.C. and Portland by short 3 hour
car drives. As a result, many artists travel
between the cities with increasing frequency
to perform in front of different audiences
while also travelling to see the work of
others. This makes for a robust community
of performance practitioners who can get a
little surly when a visiting curator or fellow
artist says something like, “I love how
courageous you are, living out here on your
own terms without caring about what’s
happening in the art world.”
The artists here – and the audiences, too
– are very much aware of a larger
international performance scene and what
they want from programmers is help gaining
regular access to it without any curatorial
heavy-handedness. They want to experience
works by artists who are being seen and
discussed in Berlin or Tokyo, and they have a
hunger for the kind of progressive aesthetics
that are difficult to present at most venues in
the U.S.
Seattleites also get that while we may be
isolated geographically, we’re no more so
than anyone else. Even as people around the
world can view performances online and at
movie theatres (i.e. OntheBoards.tv and
Metropolitan Opera simulcasts),
contemporary performance still exists on the
fringe of modern society, appealing mostly
to small niche audiences who respond to
new ideas and forms of expression. Overall,
it’s still a far out enterprise no matter where
you live.
Lane Czaplinski is artistic director of On the
Boards (OtB) – The Behnke Center for
Contemporary Performance in Seattle.
Freelancer / Employee
Free-lance curatorship or permanent
employment at an institution? Answering
that question is about as hard as the one
after “single or in a relationship”. Both
depend on personal temperament and spirit,
on the specific circumstances of one’s
existence, but also on the stage in one’s life.
Both may be equally interesting, but
there are significant differences: A free-lance
curator has to account for and prove the
relevance of a theme or content to an
institution, politician or sponsor, which often
is a tedious process. If the curator succeeds,
she/he at best is granted the privilege to
work very closely on the content: the
conception of programmes, dialogue with
the artists, texts, presentation and public
relations. In principle, a permanently
translation david ender
Sigrid Gareis works as a curator in the field of
theatre and dance. From 1992-2000 she
developed the department for theatre/dance for
the Siemens Arts Program, from 2000-2009 she
was founding director of Tanzquartier Wien.
Friendship
In order to participate in this glossary of
terms, there were some choices to be made:
— Choosing a definition for friendship (oh,
help)
— Choosing a definition for curatorship
(once more: oh, help)
— Choosing an example out of my personal
situation (easy)
— Choosing a moment to write*
— Trying to make sense by relating those
choices; thinking a guideline for this
might exist; quickly realising there is no…
start:
In ancient times the word ‘amicitia’ had a
very functional and economical meaning. It
was a strategic and tactic tool for the
aristocracy to obtain political or economical
goals. Between ‘amici’ there was a reciprocal
relationship in which obligations, expectations and efforts were always a big part of
the deal. Today in the field of arts friendships,
on the contrary, are mostly built on an
economy of trust and belief between artists
and curators; between curators and
audiences; between curators and curators.
Statistically these economics make the
possibility of established friendships (not
between ‘functions’ but between
‘individuals’) very high.
To find a strict definition for this
particular kind of friendship is very
unsatisfactory. The relationship is very Yin
and Yang between empathy and noncriticality; between authenticity and
corruptibility; between fascinated pleasure
and cold evaluation. Friendship makes the
work together stronger, but also more
complicated: Am I liking this work because I
like this person or am I very critical to this
work because I like this person? Luckily the
critical discourse helps to erase all
conjugations of the verb ‘to like’ in the
performing arts field! (We abandoned that
one to the facebookworld!)**
Barbara Raes was dance programmer of the
arts centre Vooruit in Ghent, Belgium from 20002007. Since 2007 she is the artistic director of the
arts centre BUDA in Kortrijk, Belgium.
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employed programmer also is allowed to do
so, but she/he has to keep an eye on other,
often disagreeable things: quotas, box office,
sponsors, legal questions regarding
employment and the stage, politics, the
institution’s reputation, various campaigns,
and so on. An artistic director or manager of
an institution easily spends 80% of the day
on non-artistic questions, leaving her/him
20% of her/his time for the development of
content. That’s when she/he curses her/his
job and starts to dream about becoming a
free-lance curator. Or to be able to change
places with her/his dramaturge …
Therefore, working as a free-lance curator
is the way of choice for every “content
player”: it will never make you rich, as Harald
Szeemann already pointed out, but it does
promise a high degree of personal fulfilment.
There’s one disadvantage though; you may
be able to make an impact, be it through the
development of formats, by promoting
artists or by pinpointing artistic questions …
But you will have limited success with
changing landscapes or structures. As a rule,
you need an institution to do so. Because of
its foothold in the political community, its
heaviness and persistence it is mostly the
institution which secures an idea’s visibility,
implementation and lastingness. Institutions
rarely happen to be sexy, but they are an
important means to an end.
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* (it was midnight
after Edit
Kaldor’s: C’est du Chinois)
** On the 15th of May 2010
according to Facebook I have
815 friends, of which 477 are
artists. I could wonder if
that’s a good or bad thing,
but actually I prefer to fold
napkins into funny structures
and dream of the day that
the happy conceptualist asks
the wonderful grand jeté ‘will
we become friends?’ (and the
other way around).
ajickarF
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Interdisciplinarity
In the last 40 years we have welcomed transdisciplinarity, multi-disciplinarity, interdiciplinarity, in-disciplinarity, and probably
today extra-disciplinarity, a sort of free-style.
Many innovations blurred expressive
boundaries: crossovers, infiltrations of newmedia, electronic arts, relational art, public
arts, revival of the performance…
Interdisciplinarity is already there.
Contemporary languages organically involve
the idea of intersection and fusion of
knowledge and expressivity, with any
distinction and a non-hierarchical
horizontality between means of expression
and communication.
Interdisciplinarity could be seen in terms
of ‘performing competences’. From the
extreme of rather rigid interdepartmental
collaborations – i.e. a visual artist in dialogue
with a performer plus a musician or a filmmaker – to a more informal exchange of
knowledge, to the articulation within one
artist’s research with the aim of producing
activity rather than objects. Formal solutions
depend on the project itself, and are
developed in the most adequate forms/
platforms/languages.
To overcome the problem of taxonomy
and disciplinarity it is of a great importance
where and how to operate. Theatres, concert
halls, cinemas, museums and other equipped
structures/spaces are fixed dispositives that
immediately ask for precise actions. They
have a connotative power. Interdisciplinarity
needs its own ground, sensitive fields in
which the settings of arts blend with the
space of life, versus places which are
exhausted (socially, symbolically) and
represent a status quo. So, on a curatorial
level, displays should be the main point to
focus on – strictly in connection with the art
works and the artists’ point of view, in order
to ‘perform the structures’.
If working in a structure always brings a
series of existing normatives and pre-sets, a
neutral terrain with no connotations could
be disclosed as the ideal place for the inter-
action of different disciplinary competences.
In destructured spaces the different experiences and knowledge collapse in a more
creative and intensive way. Not-yet-formatted spaces permit a wide range of approaches and a certain mutability. Dispositives
where it is possible to re-invent formats and
relationships for a presentation that mainly
would leave space for performance as
behaviour and activities. In any language.
What interests me in curating is the effort
of negotiating between ‘normal’ life flow and
the ‘artistic’ intervention, pushing the curator
and the other invited competences – artists
and collaborators – at the crossroads
between the possible and impossible, in a
game of connections. De-insulating art.
Silvia Fanti is the artistic director of the
interdisciplinary Festival internazionale sullo
Spettacolo Contemporaneo in Bologna, Italy.
Internationality
A few years ago somebody said to me:
Indonesia, there is really nothing going on
there. And I thought: there are 120 million
people living in Indonesia – and one
Westerner says there is nothing happening?
What kind of arrogance is that? So I went to
see what was happening in Indonesia.
We still have a colonial attitude and we
are still imperialists. We still have the feeling
that Western culture is superior – we still
don’t see that others might be just as rich or
even richer. In this regard, programming an
international festival is for me mainly about
changing our western perspective. To
confront our point of view with the point of
view of artists from Asia or Africa.
We can never fully read an artistic work
from another culture – we should accept
that. It is a good lesson in modesty. The
problem is not that we do not fully understand, the problem is when we think we do.
Not to easily bridge the differences is also a
sign of respect.
agree at all. After all these years I still think
there is not enough international circulation,
and I still think that we as curators are not
courageous enough. Despite all the information tools we have – we still don’t know
anything about the world.
From a conversation with Frie Leysen. She
founded the art centre De Singel in Antwerpen
and in 1994 the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in
Bruxelles. In the last years her research is
concentrated on the Arabic countries, where she
curated the Festival Meeting Points 5 in eleven
cities. She is the first international artistic
director of the festival Theater der Welt.
Labelling
The act of labelling can be performed on at
least two occasions: when we are looking for
money to realise a much wanted project; and
when we find the money to realise the much
wanted project, and finally announce its
public appearance.
In the first case, the goal is clear: we label
to convince a specific funder or institution
with terms it is sensitive to (young and
emerging, engaging and political, innovative
or canonised, exclusive or broadly accessible).
But whom do we address in the second case?
My first impulse is to say: the audience!
We want to inform our audience in the best
possible way. Which labels can win a potential
spectator over? Classics are labels of genre
(theatre/dance/music/visual theatre/interdisciplinary etc), status (work-in-progress,
experimental, première) and place of origin.
There might not even be such a big difference
with the labels for the funding bodies. But
apart from the seduction, the goal is also to
create the right expectations and to push
spectators softly in a specific direction.
Part of this however is related to ... ourselves. Isn’t it the highest achievement when
a spectator buys a ticket because it is part of
my programme? So the labelling serves two
purposes: to give the right information and
to create the right aura around the context:
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That also means that some works cannot
easily be transported into other contexts.
You don’t have to understand it all, but you
have to be able to relate to it in some way. I
once saw a piece by Bulgakov in Moscow – it
was at the beginning of Perestroika and the
first time it was staged again – and I was
carried away by the amazing electricity in the
audience. When it arrived at Kunstenfestival
it was just some mediocre Russian production. The highly politicised context could not
be felt in Brussels.
On the other hand, it happens that artists
produce work which they think can be
successful in Europe – since that’s where the
money is. Prostitution exists all over the
world, also in the arts. So what you get is a
nice exotic cocktail with a bit of Asian
tradition nicely wrapped with a touch of
contemporary flavour – and it works: the
West loves it.
In the same way we love war, we love
poverty and misery. A Lebanese artist told
me recently: I am fed up with being
considered a war artist, I am just an artist!
But we love to see Palestinians with
dynamite around their waists, oppressed
Chinese, beautiful African dancing bodies and
veiled Arab women. We want to confirm our
clichés – it secures our way of thinking. But
not only does it give the wrong view, it is
also very disrespectful to the local cultures
and their important differences.
Of course it takes two to tango: There are
also enough curators that don’t see that or
think this is indeed what their audiences
want. But it is not just about buying a project;
it is about investing time to develop a relationship with an artist, to understand his or
her vision and the urgency of his or her work.
It takes time, but as a curator, this is our job.
You can make a festival behind your desk
– but internationality is a decision. It takes a
lot of time, it takes some money, and it takes
a lot of energy and frustration. Some colleagues say that international work is not
necessary anymore since everybody knows
the world via CNN and the internet – I don’t
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my programme. Through the labels appears a
curator who is adventurous, who cares for
young artists and invests in them, who has a
good antenna for quality. And the audience is
invited to be a part of this.
And what about the infamous label
‘première’? Isn’t it more than the others
addressed to a particular part of the
audience, namely... ourselves? We, the
curators, the theatre professionals, are after
all spectators too. That we are also
‘conculleagues’ (colleagues-concurrents)
becomes visible in the paradox of the P-word
in all its variations (première, world première,
pre-première, continental première, national
première, specific language première, and
how about ‘Rotterdamse premiere’?): the
première-thing is a strategy for survival for a
curator and his organisation, because it
stands for uniqueness, for the strong
relations an artist has to this specific festival
or theatre and in this regard it secures
politically the working possibilities for many
artists. But as the première claim blocks
chances for artists to perform elsewhere, to
define his own schedule we should always
keep in mind that our primary audience is our
local audience. And they doesn’t really care
whether a show has been presented before in
a remote place. In the end, collaboration –
being colleagues – will be more important
than exclusivity – being concurrents.
Annemie Vanackere became the theatre
programmer and producer of the Rotterdamse
Schouwburg in Rotterdam in 1995. As artistic
director she is also responsible for the festival De
Internationale Kreuze, and for the Productiehuis
Rotterdam.
Locality
I like my coffee with milk. In Fribourg (CH),
this means I have to order a “renversé“.
Elsewhere I would ask for a latte macchiatto,
a Milchkaffee, a café au lait or even simply a
latte. But is a renversé really the same as a
latte macchiato? Do you receive the perfect
café au lait when you ask for a Milchkaffee?
Drinking coffee can sometimes cause a
miniature culture shock. Luckily. Because are
we not all witnesses to a sneaking cultural
homogenisation?
This however doesn’t mean that I am
bluntly pleading for a return to localisation.
The result of globalisation is that the
romantic idea of cultural origins or local
roots has more or less lost every meaning.
Authenticity doesn’t refer to provenance any
more, but rather to a successful arrival of a
cultural practice in a new surrounding, ideally
with its own, obstinate touch. It is in that
sense that locality becomes interesting: to
produce international artistic work that
creates an interactive relationship with and
questions a local context or to stimulate
local artists to overcome the little box
thinking by trying out new formats. To
organise a contest with a leitmotiv that
challenges artists and practitioners from
other fields, and that offers a residency and
mentoring to get to know the city and local
society. To involve the local spectators in an
active way, by inviting them to be
performers or participants in an artistic
project. To use other locations in the city and
reach an audience of passers-by. To be
actively involved in both local and widerranging artistic activities.
But also to keep convincing state
authorities that ‘local’ art works can be produced by international artists and practitioners from other fields. To respect the reality
of a small town, and care for both a critical
audience of diehards who expects to be
baffled year after year and a younger audience that discovers things for the first time.
In the best case an art festival in a small
town in Switzerland doesn’t have one profile.
Rather it exists as a series of mini profiles: it
focuses on every project, every artist, and
preserves their artistic autonomy. After all,
everyone likes their coffee in a different way.
It’s the actual art that defines the diversity of
a festival and that also reveals the
heterogeneous profile of its habitat.
Money
Money is the oil in the joints of a creaky
performance system. We obsess about it,
complain of it, never have enough of it. We
deny it, love it, hate it, embrace it, fear it. It
makes OK things awful and can make the
ambitious possible. It costs and buys us time.
Its lack was a virtue, but is now a sin, while
its abundance can be an even greater offence. Access to none can free us from limits,
while even just a little of it can box us in.
For something all about seemingly very
simple numbers, it’s stunningly relative when
we begin to count it in different ways: How
big are our fees? How do locals fare
compared to internationals? What is the per
seat subsidy? What are our percentages of
different kinds of revenue? Who should be
paid? How much? What’s the return on
investment on that? Are we always running a
deficit if we’re funded by people who are
giving money away (with no expectation of
return)? Is that OK?
It’s tricky stuff, money.
Here in NYC I fight internally with the idea
that it will somehow solve our problems – of
course it cannot, yet without the idea of a
professional level of support for artists, the
work struggles to improve. Money follows
ideas – are the ideas inhibited or limited by
their resources? Perhaps after decades of
assuming no money they have become so.
Yet the other ideas that underpin the
strength of NYC and the US continue to
ferment and explode, spread and evolve.
There is always a fear that it is the theatre
itself, our own ideas or failures that are really
the problem. Perhaps it is so. We cannot
assume we automatically deserve a role in
the social ecosystem we inhabit. But once
earned, should it be automatically
supported?
Then somehow at a certain point we just
have to forget money; it needs to cease
being a limit, but rather an enabler. Make it a
tool to do what you want, not a problem to
overcome. Find capital; use it well – for your
artists, and for your audience. Simple –
couldn’t be easier.
Just gotta go find some.
Vallejo Gantner has been the artistic director of
Performance Space 122 (PS122) in New York since
2004. Prior to this, he was the director of the
Dublin Fringe Festival and the artistic associate
of the Melbourne Festival.
Networking
When a few of us sat in the garden of Villa
Comunale di Polverigi in July, 1981 talking
about our artistic affinities, we felt that a
common European spirit, much before the
creation of the European Union, was already
at work uniting theatre professionals from
different countries who shared the same
theatre vision. A vision of a new theatre that
in the now distant eighties stirred up Europe
and initiated a number of bold impulses that
had arrived from the fields of visual arts,
technology and science, new media, dance
and movement – also rejecting a prevailing
logo-centric order of the time.
The idea which we were all enthusiastic
about then was to create an opportunity to
meet on a regular basis in order to exchange
ideas and expertise, to find partners who
advocate freedom of creation and willingness to take risks, the ones with whom we
can share experiences and conceive projects.
So IETM was born, today certainly the largest
and most influential performing arts network
in Europe.
The conversations continued in the
following years. We talked about the tasks
that stood before the curators, festival
directors, producers, promoters, a new class
of people working between artists and
audiences who were growing in number and
who were going to provide logistical support
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Sally De Kunst is artistic director of the Belluard
Bollwerk International festival in Fribourg,
Switzerland.
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by creating production, distribution and
promotion structures for the emerging
generation of theatre artists. Artists who at
the time were profoundly changing the
European theatre landscape. They were
produced outside of the institutions and
required specific production conditions to
which we tried to respond.
The “boom” of festivals in the following
years contributed to the creation of a theatre
market that established the new theatre as
the mainstream development and which soon
set up globally imitated aesthetic parameters
that spread from the independent structures
to institutions eventually causing a uniformity
of the European performing arts scene.
Today networking seems just a sophisticated way of saying “doing business” inside a
group connected by common interests. As
such, networks with their lucrative, market
logic have an immense impact on the
development of artistic expression but this
issue is rarely discussed. It is not only about
how to curate, to produce, to tour, but what
is the work we are presenting, producing and
touring. Little is said about that.
What artistic, political and social space do
the theatre networks of today define as
theirs? Are their members connected with
any kind of vision or are the artistic visions
an outdated concept for the majority of
curators?
Gordana Vnuk is the founder and artistic
director of the Festival of New Theatre EUROKAZ
in Zagreb since 1987. Previous positions include
theatre programmer at the Chapter Arts Centre
in Cardiff, Wales and artistic director of
Kampnagel in Hamburg, Germany.
New
I seldom use this difficult word, new, but
people seem to hear it anyway. When I
present work, it is about the Artist and the
Art that she/he or they propose, and I, for
some reason, find relevant to introduce to
my context. The last time anyone used the
word ‘new’ and it made sense to me was
Michael Kirby in The New Theatre from 1966.
The concept of new is not only difficult in
the postmodern sense of “nothing is new”. It
is also problematic in the historical sense.
How long is something new? To whom is it
new? To many fellow curators it seems
important that they are the first to present
something. This usually is a sort of colonization. “I presented them first in Europe”, “…in
Germany”, or “…in German-speaking countries” and so on. It’s a bit like the Spanish
claiming they found America, the Vikings
were there before them, and let’s not forget
the Indians (Native Americans) who lived
there in the first place.
To me the context is the most important
curatorial tool in the performing arts. Since it
is not a plastic art it has to be shown to exist.
So with this view everything not shown is
new. I have felt the need with my festival
Perfect Performance in Stockholm to present
a lot of artists who have never performed in
Sweden. Not because they are new but
rather because they did not exist in the
consciousness of the Swedish performing
arts scene. One or two critics/colleagues
have complained that this or that is not new.
Yes and no. Depending on context. If the
framework is the Swedish performing arts
scene, then Romeo Castellucci was new, as
was Forced Entertainment, Tg Stan, Richard
Maxwell even Baktruppen. And so on.
The first international program I presented with more or less unestablished artists
was this year’s TUPP in Uppsala. After presenting mostly well-known names I now felt
the scene was ready for “the new”. (I contradict myself on purpose.) I wanted to make a
program where the more established names
like Laurie Anderson, with a long history of
communicating and building an audience,
was placed next to an artist who was just
starting out, most of them are also not
known to my colleagues, which I think also
raised my stocks as a programmer. (Finding
and presenting unknown continents is a
seductive tool for the curator).
Politics
The increasing commercialisation of nearly
all spheres of society in the last years has
created a new role for public arts institutions.
They are part of the few remaining spaces
which are not yet completely governed by
capitalist logic. From this point of view a
special critical perspective is possible – and I
tend to say: necessary.
In these political circumstances I see the
stage, the theatre, the festival not only as a
place for artistic production and presentation
but also as a very specific public space – well
equipped to be a place for political reflection
of society by aesthetic means. This of course
changes the ratio of viewing as well as curating the performing arts. Artistic/performative quality becomes only one of the criteria
while social and political relevance gain importance. The borders between the different
art forms get nearly irrelevant and the relation
between art and social practises gets more
and more in focus. When you curate along
political, philosophical or social ideas or themes, the quality of the project starts to come
not only from the individual work but more
and more from relations and interdependencies – between individual projects as well
between art, social theory and political reality.
For the last three years as the director of
the International Summer Festival Hamburg,
I have focused on exploring the challenges of
climate change with artists and scientists. It
turns out that the contemporary artistic
community has surprisingly little language to
address ecological issues. Maybe the topic is
at the same time too new and regarded as
too old-fashioned. Maybe it still smells too
much like a hippie-issue, in any case ecology
is not fashionable in the arts.
Therefore providing a frame like the festival was a highly productive catalyst to enable
artistic research and production. Several artists have embarked on journeys into ecological issues and their implications on society. In
many cases the research starts or leads to
social and scientific areas way beyond the
usual realm of performing arts. Scientific
approaches and methods might as well be
necessary as a sensorium for social and political interaction which are not always to that
extent part of the usual artistic way of working. After years of working on these verges I
am deeply convinced that this is where the
future lies – for the arts as well as for society.
Matthias von Hartz worked as a theatre director
before starting to curate political events in large
theatres and museums. Since 2007 he is artistic
co-director of Theaterfestival Impulse and
artistic director of Internationales
Sommerfestival Hamburg.
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Danjel Andersson started Perfect Performance,
a hybrid organization in Stockholm that makes
festivals, seminars, platforms. He is program
director of the Annual Performing Arts festival
TUPP in Uppsala and artistic director of Moderna
Dansteatern in Stockholm.
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Power
The power to commission artists, the power
to accept a project or to invite a production.
The power to make decisions that are
important for the artists; a power that is at
the same time agonising and exciting. It is
easier when you invite an existing production
– and much more complex when you are
engaged in the project or when you
commission a work. The reaching of a
decision, the dialogue with the artist but also
the dialogue with the partners, these are the
key moments of our power. And not to
choose something does not necessarily mean
the work is not innovative, clever, committed
enough – the festival has a certain style,
works have to fit in.
To exercise this power is at the heart of
this profession; once you say yes to a
proposal or when artists accept yours, you
need to persuade the partners, to find the
right space and the financial support. The
power of decision becomes the power of
conviction.
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But the doubt stays present just until the
premiere. It is rare for a producer to be able
to intervene efficiently in the process of a
creation; rather we influence it by optimizing
the working conditions. And if despite all this
we realize during the rehearsals that the
show is not fulfilling our expectations, we
accept it and we present it. We never
cancelled an announced production.
It is a power full of obligations.
It is a fragile power. Without enough
positive response from the public or the
press it is impossible to impose an artist. But
we can continue to support him for 2 or 3
projects and hope that he will find his
audience.
The power of obstinacy.
There are many examples of artists who
succeeded after a difficult start; recently at
the Festival d’Automne it was the case with
Steven Cohen, Richard Maxwell or the
composer Mark Andre. But also many others
over the years: Merce Cunningham, Helmut
Lachenmann or Richard Foreman at their
beginnings.
In the end, it is a power that comprehends failure, a production cannot fulfil
expectations; however, if we are convinced
of the talent of an author, we can continue
the collaboration… for quite a while!
It is with anxiety and fever that this
power is exercised, intuition and reflection
are essential, each decision being full of
consequences for the artist but also for the
backer.
Marie Collin is artistic director of the Festival
d’Automne in Paris since 1978. She was the
director or the Nimes Theater and programmer
for the theatre at the Georges Pompidou Center.
Society
Berlin is a social democratic city that reacts
strongly to particular subjects – our audience
comes to see certain topics rather than
artists. Conceptual approaches taken from
dance are therefore having a hard time.
What I am interested in, for example, is
when Rimini Protokoll acquires Daimler-Benz
stocks as entry tickets for two hundred visitors, for their main meeting, and the whole
thing quite suddenly turns into theatre, a bad
performance. When it suddenly becomes clear
that this world of finances, which is currently
considered as the true reality, reveals itself as
working with fictions. Therefore, I don’t really
like calling it Political Theatre, I prefer the
term Social. It is also because such pieces are
in their aesthetics and their content clearly
different from the idea of Political Theatre
that was current in the 1970s and 1980s.
For me, HAU is a place for dealing with
social topics, conflicts, discourses. Perhaps
Berlin has a positional advantage here, with
its 250-thousand people coming from the
university sector, but topics such as migration
can also be discussed elsewhere – I believe
that many festivals and theatres are just not
trying hard enough. For me, for example,
opening the theatre house directly towards
the Kreuzberg quarter, with its dominant
minority of Turkish origin, has been a part of
our programme from the very outset. It took
us some time to develop it; in the beginning,
it was above all a great statement and a massive effort of making people involved in it – it
was not the same as with other free groups,
which tend to apply by themselves. We
approached people and asked and begged. Up
to the present day they haven’t really come to
claim the house for themselves – it remains
something that one must give a push to,
again and again. It is considered a great
success if a performance has an audience that
consists of up to one third immigrants – and
then with the next production, that number
will mercilessly fall back to three, four, or five
percent. But this five percent, if we manage to
preserve them, are still a great success.
For me, managing such a theatre house
also has something to do with the desire of
taking politically cultural positions. A place
like HAU, which is smaller than a city theatre
and has no permanent ensemble, can always
be redefined – also as a place for making
From a conversation with Matthias Lilienthal,
artistic director of the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in
Berlin since 2003. Before that he was the leading
dramaturge at Volksbühne am Rosa-LuxemburgPlatz in Berlin, and artistic director of the Theater
der Welt in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Köln und Duisburg
in 2002.
Sponsoring
1. Look for possible financial partners who
have the ambition of placing themselves
in the market as “innovative, research
oriented, risky, daring and international”
– the company searches for a high profile
and a business-ethics which you can
connect with.
2. Be prepared before meeting. Get all the
information you can on the work and
daily life of the other side. This shows a
mutual interest, respect and
understanding.
3. Never talk about your work first. This is
the kind of egocentricity that turns the
other side into a financial cow being called
to get milked. And in consequence it turns
the cultural worker into a beggar. It is
imperative that – even when both sides
know that the meeting will sooner or later
be about money – both have the feeling
of meeting on the same level. So first talk
about the other, about the economy and
the struggles the other has to face before
smoothly introducing your work.
4. When talking about your work and the
contemporary state of art never give the
possible sponsor the feeling of being
excluded. Try to mediate in a way that the
other side has the feeling of being
competent. Give simple examples, tell
stories about the effects your work has
on a local and international level. Make
the other feel as having missed something in the past and give them the
chance for future participation.
5. Never complain too much about your
current financial problems. If necessary,
try to tell how creative you are in inventing solutions… this is true and more
funny for the other side.
6. Be honest. Admit you have nothing what
can be sold on the first level. There is no
money to make in what you do. Never say
that a performance will reach a large
number of people if it’s not going to
happen. Talk about other values instead –
international fame and acceptance in a
high profile community as well as in a
local audience.
So never cheat (beyond a certain extent).
You have to know that despite the fact
that the possible sponsor is working in a
completely different context, your
counterpart has a great instinct when not
being taken seriously – otherwise they
would not be where they are right now.
7. Make them laugh. This is one of the keys
to open the others mind, heart (and
purse). Most people are surrounded by
quite stiff and boring people. They are
happy when a formal business-lunch
turns out to be exciting and inspiring.
8. Make them feel extremely comfortable
and unique so they want reasons to see
you more often.
9. Talk about concise steps to build the
future together. Speak about money you
need to fulfil your job and to realize your
ideas. That’s the time to get deep into
financial support and long-term
partnerships.
10. Once you have the support of sponsors,
you have to work on to fulfil your
promises; you have to work on this
relation, be an extraordinary good host –
otherwise you lose him forever.
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politics. Even if the times when the theatre
people were crucial in spreading opinions are
long gone, one still tries to shout back at the
opinion that management has fallen into the
hands of a particular economic scene. In
principle, it is like this: Whenever I see a
taboo, I start itching. But I see myself here
primarily as an organizer, someone who
brings people together.
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Veronica Kaup-Hasler is director of steirischer
herbst festival in Graz, Austria since 2006. In
2002 and 2004 she was artistic director of the
Theaterformen festival in Hannover and
Brunswick.
Themes & Topics
“I’m sorry but your project proposal does not
fit our festival theme”. It sounds like a lousy
but handy excuse for programmers. But
there are other reasons to work with topics
and themes than to overcome the
arbitrariness of individual taste. For instance,
you can make your marketeers very happy.
Instead of having separate communication
for all different kinds of projects and
performances, just one theme has to be
communicated, and performances can serve
as examples of the ‘bigger’ concept. Test it,
they will love it!
If you are one of those programmers who
want to go beyond the needs of the marketing team, there are more good reasons to
use themes or topics. For example: I am
working in an art centre with a seasonal
program. This program has no theme, no big
idea. It is made up of some locally supported
artists, some international ones, a crowdpleaser from time to time and, of course, my
personal preferences. A good and balanced
season has dance and theatre, established
and young work, work for the big venue and
work for the small one etc… all formal
criteria. So if I make a festival, I WANT to
have a theme or topic to work with. If not, I
would be doing exactly the same as what I
am doing the whole year through…
In establishing the theme for a festival, I
start from the projects I am interested in. Is
there an aspect of the work they have in
common? I don’t work around a theme and
then start selecting projects that fit into the
concept. Themes follow artists. They come to
being as a result of thorough ‘concept
kneading’ together with the involved artists.
I would rarely commission a work of art to fit
the festival theme.
Does this mean that nothing can be
instigated by a festival theme? Not at all. In a
best case scenario the theme functions as a
spark. It can bring up ideas from artists that
fit the theme very well, but were not
imposed by me.
The starting point of a festival program is
always specific artistic projects – these will
be the nucleus of the festival. Other projects
will circle around it, throwing a different
perspective on the topics. As a result, the
theme is expanded, which is essential.
Another argument not to be too austere
in selecting topics? In working with
thematical festivals, the meaning of a work
of art risks to be reduced to the context. The
festival theme, when applied with strictness
rather than with poetry, overpowers the
artwork’s topics. Artistic projects are not a
mere illustration to the topic, they question
it, stretch it, and – if you’re lucky – they do
implode it. It makes the festival as vulnerable
and questionable as the projects it presents.
This attitude of vulnerability makes the
theme not a bodice, but a surprising context
for both invited artists and the audience.
Tom Bonte is performing arts programmer in
Vooruit Art Centre, Gent and the vice-president
of the Dance Commission of the Flemish
Government. In Vooruit he often works on
themes and topics in festivals such as Almost
Cinema and The Game is Up.
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The Curator as
Mesostic and Asterisk
deufert&plischke
*
after a premiere the curator who had invited us came to us in
the company of the director of the city council for culture.
The director had just started this job, before that he was at
the tax office. The curator said that the performance was a
heavy chunk, a real burden for her and her theatre. The
director on the other hand smiled, stretched out his hand and
congratulated us with the words: excellent work!
*a few weeks ago a curator called us and said: “I just read what the work that
we will co-produce with you will be called. Finally a sexy title! I guess you will
have audiences for once.”
dan Ce today
seems to be as Unnecessary as
all othe R
Arts so
That it needs
t O be taken
good ca Re of.
*after a performance the curator who had invited us asked us to go eat with
her, as she had to tell us why she didn’t like the performance at all. We went
out and she ordered chicken that she started to eat with her fingers. Soon
her mouth and fingers were shining from fat and tandoori sauce. It was
difficult to listen to her comments, especially as we are vegetarians. She saw
the performance again two days after in the company of another curator
who wanted to invite the performance. Afterward she said that it was now
excellent as we did the right changes. We hadn’t changed a thing.
*once we were working with two great performers from Romania. When we
arrived at the theatre the curator saw the performers. As the performers
were rather skinny she asked us with a very concerned face: “Do they still
have no food in Romania?” Every day she kept asking if they ate their
breakfasts at the hotel.
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*when we were traveling with our light designer to a French festival, he
would also help us to arrange props and things on stage. He had quite long
hair covered with a cap and he had a bit of a beard. Also his clothes were a bit
dusty from unloading the truck. The curator came on stage and was furious
as she thought he would be on stage with us. She kept repeating: ça va pas,
ça va pas, ça va pas!
*curators seem to like Excel spreadsheets.
*knowing about the more experimental nature of our work it was a great
surprise when we were invited to open a rather known dance festival. After
the performance that was received with quite some skepticism we were
asked to open the buffet. Again we were in an awkward situation, as
everything contained some meat. We filled our plates with food and then
handed them to friends. This act was later seen as a provocation. Since then
there was no more communication with the festival.
a Cknowledging the
Use of
Risk and
Affirmation
Towards an
unkn Owability of the
a Rts
*once we were teaching in a quite remote and rural area. The last day, the
curator who had invited us wanted to come in order to pay us, pay in cash,
which is very unusual. So just after the workshop she appeared, lifted her
skirt and took a bundle of bank-notes that she carried in her garter.
we Claim that
yo Ur position
the one of the cu Rator
needs A
s Trong
intention t O organize
the uno Rganizable
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Curating Performing Arts
dan Ce needs to
actively Undermine its
own Reduction and
self attr Action to turn
into its own documen T by dreaming
the dream Of
ete Rnity.
*once we were invited to an artistic residence program but we didn’t get any
information about the address, even after asking several times. As the pick up
was arranged by the curator, we had no worry. Arriving at the airport no one
was there to pick us up. So after waiting for quite some time we called the
office but no one was there. So we called a colleague of the curator in
another city and she told us to take a taxi and she gave us an address. As we
arrived the curator was sitting with a friend in front of the house, quite
surprised to see us. He had forgotten. So he had to arrange a place to stay for
us and asked us to wait for an hour. After 6 hours he came to pick us up and
drive us to the place. Arriving at the place he found out he had lost the key of
the apartment and had to go get a new one from the owner. This took
another few hours. The following two weeks we spent there were the best
days we have had in years!
*when arriving to a festival north of the polar circle in the summer it was
snowing and about 2° cold. We were dressed up like for winter, with boots,
gloves and caps. To our astonishment the curator appeared in a t-shirt and
flip-flops, as did the rest of the crew. Later the temperature rose to 20° and
we took part in an absolutely fantastic festival. Coming home we told
another curator about this fantastic festival and the great place it was
happening at. So next year she went there. The program was bad and it was
raining all week.
to take Care of the arts
means to Understand
the Risk
the Artists
Take
t Ogether with
the cu Rator
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Notes on
Contributors
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Notes on Contributors
G
abriele Brandstetter (Germany)
is professor of Theatre and
Dance Studies at Freie Universität
Berlin. Her research focus is on:
performance theories; concepts of
body and movement in notation,
image and performance, dance,
theatricality and gender
differences. Her publications
include Tanz-Lektüren.
Körperbilder und Raumfiguren der
Avantgarde (1995), ReMembering the
Body. Körperbilder in Bewegung
(2000, co-ed.), Erzählen und
Wissen. Paradigmen und Aporien
ihrer Inszenierungen in Goethes
‘Wahlverwandschaften’ (2003, ed.),
Bild-Sprung. TanzTheaterBewegung
im Wechsel der Medien (2005),
Schwarm(E)Motion. Bewegung
zwischen Affekt und Masse (2007,
co-ed.), Tanz als Anthropologie
(2007, co-ed.), Prognosen über
Bewegungen (2009, co-ed.).
T
he artistwin deufert&plischke
lives and works in Berlin.
Their video and performance work
has been presented internationally
since 2001. Together
deufert&plischke created the
performance trilogy Directories
(2002-2006), Inexhaustible (2003),
As if (it was beautiful) (2004),
Sofia SP / science is fiction
(2004), Reportable Portraits
(2007), Anarchiv#1: I am not a
Zombie (2009), and Anarchiv#2:
second hand (2010). The artistwin
teaches at various universities
and art institutes in Europe and
Latin America. In 2006 they were
Visiting Professors at the
University of Hamburg (Department
of Performance Studies) and in
2008 at the University of Giessen
(Institute of Applied Theatre
Science). Since 2010 they are
Professors at the BA Program
Dance, Context, Choreography / HZT
Berlin.
T
im Etchells (1962) is an artist
and a writer based in the UK.
He has worked in a wide variety of
contexts, notably as the leader of
the performance group Forced
Entertainment. His work spans
performance, video, photography,
text projects, installation and
fiction. His publications include
his first novel The Broken World
(2008) and the monograph on Forced
Entertainment, Certain Fragments
(1999). Etchells’ visual art works
were presented at solo shows at
Gasworks and Sketch (London) and
Künstlerhaus (Bremen); at the
biennales Manifesta 7 (2008), Art
Sheffield (2008) and Goteborg
Bienale (2009); as well as in
groups shows at the Netherlands
Media Art Institute (Amsterdam),
MUHKA (Antwerp), Sparwasser HQ
(Berlin), MACBA (Barcelona),
Kunsthaus Graz and many more. He
is “Thinker in Residence” (20092010) at Tate Research and LADA in
London.
H
ugo Glendinning has been
working as a photographer for
twenty years. His output stretches
across the cultural industries
from fine art collaborations in
video and photography, through
production and performance
documentation to portrait work. He
has worked with most leading
British theatre and dance
companies and is regularly
commissioned by The RSC, National
Theatre, Royal Opera House and
many West End theatre producers.
He has published and exhibited
work internationally, notably his
continuing project of
documentation and the
investigation of performance
photography with Forced
Entertainment Theatre Company.
H
annah Hurtzig has headed the
Mobile Academy (Mobile
Akademie) since 1999, an art
project with changing focal topics
ranging between field research,
course offerings, and actionism,
opens up spaces for collective
learning, production and other new
formats of conveying knowledge.
The Mobile Academy is stationed at
the HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) in
Berlin, but projects of the
Academy are shown internationally,
including TR Warschau 06,
Tanzkongress Berlin (2006),
Istanbul Biennale (2007),
steirischer herbst, Graz (2007),
Wiener Festwochen (2008),
manifesta7 (2008), the bluecoat
Liverpool (2008), Dubai / Abu
Dhabi und Biennale di Venezia
(2009), Israeli Center for Digital
Art in Jaffa (2009) and Dresden
(2010). From 1985 to 1990 she was
the artistic director of
Kampnagelfabrik in Hamburg.
F
lorian Malzacher is coprogrammer of the festival
steirischer herbst in Graz (since
2006) and also freelance
dramaturge/curator for Burgtheater
Vienna (since 2009). After his
studies of Applied Theatre at the
University of Giessen/Germany, he
worked as a freelance theatre
journalist and was a founding
member of the independent
curators’ collective Unfriendly
Takeover in Frankfurt. He has
worked as a freelance dramaturge
for Rimini Protokoll, Lola Arias,
Nature Theater of Oklahoma. His
books include Not Even a Game
Anymore – The Theatre of Forced
Entertainment (co-ed., 2004) and
Experts of the Everyday – The
Theatre of Rimini Protokoll (coed., 2008). He is a member of the
advisory board of DasArts – Master
of Theatre, Amsterdam. Florian
Malzacher lives in Zagreb and
Graz.
R
abih Mroué was born in Beirut.
He is an actor, director,
playwright, and contributing
editor for Kalamon and TDR. He is
a co-founder and board member of
the Beirut Art Center (BAC) and
recipient of the Artist Grant for
performing arts from the
Foundation for Contemporary Arts –
New York (2010) and the Spalding
Gray Award (2010). His works
include: Photo-Romance (2009), The
Inhabitants of Images (2008), How
Nancy Wished That Everything Was
an April Fool’s Joke (2007), Make
Me Stop Smoking (2006); Looking
for a Missing Employee (2005);
Look into the Light… (2004); Who’s
Afraid of Representation? (2003),
Biokhraphia (2002); Three Posters
(2000), Extension 19 (1997).
H
ans-Ulrich Obrist joined the
Serpentine Gallery as Codirector of Exhibitions and
Programmes and Director of
International Projects in April
2006. Prior to this he was Curator
of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la
Ville de Paris since 2000, as well
as curator of museum in progress,
Vienna, from 1993-2000. He has
curated over 200 exhibitions
internationally since 1991,
including do it, Take Me, I’m
Yours (Serpentine Gallery), Cities
on the Move, Live/Life, Nuit
Blanche, 1st Berlin Biennale,
Manifesta 1, and more recently
Uncertain States of America, 1st
Moscow Triennale and 2nd Guangzhou
Biennale (Canton China). In 2007,
Obrist co-curated Il Tempo del
Postino with Philippe Parreno for
the Manchester International
Festival and since 2005 has been
curating the Marathon series of
public events. His publications
include A Brief History of
Curating and The Conversation
Series.
D
an Perjovschi is a visual
artist mixing drawing, cartoon
and graffiti in artistic pieces
drawn directly on the walls of
museums and contemporary spaces
all over the world. His drawings
comment on current political,
social or cultural issues. He has
played an active role in the
development of civil society in
Romania, through his editorial
activity with Revista 22 cultural
magazine in Bucharest, and has
stimulated exchange between the
Romanian and international
contemporary artistic scenes. He
has had exhibitions in New York,
Portugal, Germany, Spain, Hungary,
Switzerland, Sweden, Great
Britain. He is currently living
and working in Bucharest, Romania.
C
hristine Peters lives and works
as a freelance curator in
Frankfurt/Main. From 1992-1998 she
was project director and from
1998-2003 artistic director at
Künstlerhaus Mousonturm,
Frankfurt/Main. Since 2004 she has
been working as a freelance
curator, dramaturge and lecturer
for: festival Tanz & Theater
Hannover (2004), festival Theater
der Welt, Stuttgart (2005),
festival steirischer herbst, Graz
(2006), Richard Siegal/The Bakery
(since 2006). She was artistic
advisor for Tanzplan Deutschland
on curatorial issues (2008-2009).
She was curator for the festival
Theater der Welt in 2010 and of
the participatory exhibition The
barrier-free museum at the Museum
of Contemporary Art, Admont as
part of the Regionale (2010). She
lectures interdisciplinary
practice and curatorial approaches
at the Department of Theatre, Film
and Media Studies, University of
Frankfurt.
G
oran Sergej Pristaš is a
professor at the Academy of
Drama Art, University of Zagreb
(since 1994). From 1990 to 1992,
he was artistic director of the
SKUC theatre. In 1993 he was a
dramaturge and member of the
artistic council of &TD theatre;
from 1994-1999 he was a dramaturge
in the theatre group Montažstroj.
He has written several short
scripts for documentary films. As a
dramaturge, he participated in
numerous dance and theatre
productions. He is program
coordinator at the Centre for
Drama Art (CDU) since 1995 and was
president of the CDU board from
2000-2007. He was the founder and
editor-in-chief (1996-2007) of
Frakcija as well as one of the
initiators of the project Zagreb –
Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000.
Goran Sergej Pristaš is a
director, producer, dramaturge and
performer in the internationally
presented artistic collective
BADco and lives in Zagreb.
D
utch theatre director Jan
Ritsema makes theatre that
triggers these strange moments
where thinking and performing
meet. Ritsema has directed
repertoire from writers such as
Shakespeare, Koltès, Jelinek and
Müller for large and small
companies in Europe. He has
dramatised novels from Joyce,
Woolf, Rilke and others and
collaborated with different artists
on pieces such as Weak Dance
Strong Questions, TodayUlysses and
Pipelines. In 1978 Ritsema founded
the International Theatre Bookshop
in Amsterdam which has published
more than 400 books. In 2006 he
created the PerformingArtsForum
(PAF), in France near Reims, an
alternative artists’ residency run
by artists, in which some 700
international artists exchange
their experiences and knowledge
and create work every year.
R
ebecca Schneider is the Chair
of the Department of Theatre,
Speech, and Dance at Brown
University and teaches performance
studies, theatre studies, and
theories of intermedia. She is the
author of The Explicit Body in
Performance (1997) and Performing
Remains (forthcoming 2010). She
has co-edited the anthology
Re:Direction: A Theoretical and
Practical Guide to 20th-Century
Directing. She is a consortium
editor for TDR: The Drama Review
and co-editor with David Krasner
of the book series Theatre:
Theory/Text/Performance with
University of Michigan Press.
Schneider has published essays in
several anthologies, including
Psychoanalysis and Performance,
Acting Out: Feminist Performance,
Performance and Cultural Politics,
Performance Cosmologies,
Performance and the City, and the
essay “Solo Solo Solo” in After
Criticism.
M
årten Spångberg is a
performance related artist
living and working in Stockholm.
His interests concern choreography
in an expanded field. With the
architect Tor Lindstrand he
initiated International Festival,
an interdisciplinary practice
merging architecture and
choreography/performance. He
initiated the network INPEX in
2006. Since 2008 he is the
director for the MA program in
choreography at the University of
Dance and Circus in Stockholm.
V
irve Sutinen is the general
manager and artistic director
of Dansens Hus in Stockholm since
2008. Since 2007 she has also
acted as the president of IETM,
and chaired The Expert Group for
the Modules Network Funding and
119
Frakcija #55
Curating Performing Arts
Mobility Funding. Sutinen was
earlier the director of Kiasma
Theatre and in charge of the
performing arts program at Kiasma
Museum of Contemporary Art in
Helsinki. She is also the director
of URB, Urban Festival Helsinki,
and was artistic co-director of
the Dancing in November
Contemporary Dance Festival in
Helsinki in 2004 and 2005. She
curated the exhibitions ARS01
Unfolding Perspectives and Process
and Encounters in Live Situations/
Shifting Spaces in 2003. She was
also the chief curator of the
First We Take Museums exhibition
in 2005.
H
ilde Teuchies is managing
director of CREW (Belgium), the
company of artist Eric Joris that
operates on the border between
performing arts and new
technology. She also works as an
independent expert in cultural
affairs, both at the national and
European level. She has worked
with a large number of Flemish
performing artists and
organisations and has longstanding experience in
international touring and cultural
co-operation, cultural policy and
cultural networking. For seven
years, she was the first coordinator of IETM, the largest
European network for the
performing arts. From 2003-2009,
she was a member of the Advisory
Committee for Multidisciplinary Art
Centres and Festivals for the
Flemish Minister of Culture
(Belgium).
T
ea Tupajić lives and works as a
theatre director and author in
Zagreb. After studying theatre
directing and radio art at the
Academy for Drama in Zagreb, she
was artist-in-residence at
Tanzquartier Wien in 2009. She is
currently collaborating on
projects with Jan Ritsema and
working together with Petra Zanki
on The Curators’ Piece which will
premiere in 2011.
E
lke Van Campenhout (Brussels)
is a researcher and writer.
After working as a dance and
theatre critic for the Belgian
newspaper De Standaard and the
radio, she edited the performance
magazine Etcetera. Since 2007 she
has been working as the coordinator of the research program
a.pt (advanced performance
training, part of a.pass: advanced
performance and scenography
studies), an international
research project aimed at artists
and theoreticians who want to work
Frakcija
Notes on Contributors
out their proposals in a
collaborative and self-organized
environment. She works on different
research projects internationally,
in collaboration with (among
others) Master of Choreography
Amsterdam, Tanzfabrik Berlin,
Belluard Festival Fribourg, RITS
Brussels.
B
eatrice von Bismarck is a
professor of art history and
visual culture at the Academy of
Visual Arts Leipzig. From 19891993 she worked as a curator of
the Department of 20th Century Art
Städelschen Kunstinstitut,
Frankfurt/Main and until 1999 she
taught at Lüneburg University,
where she also became co-founder
and co-director of the projectspace Kunstraum der Universität
Lüneburg. In Leipzig she is also
co-founder of the project-space
/D/O/C/K-Projektbereich and
initiator of the M.A. Program
Cultures of the Curatorial which
started in autumn 2009. Current
research areas are: modes of
cultural production connecting
theory and practice; curatorial
practice; postmodern concepts of
the “artist”. Beatrice von
Bismarck lives in Leipzig and
Berlin.
P
etra Zanki studied comparative
literature and French and
received her M.A. in Theatre
Studies from the Sorbonne Nouvelle
in Paris. She is co-founder of the
artistic organizations Banana
Guerilla and eksscena platform. As
performance and dance maker she
worked together with Britta
Wirthmüller, Oliver Frljić,
Montažstroj, Shadowcasters, Via
Negativa. Currently she is working
together with Tea Tupajić on The
Curators’ Piece which will
premiere in 2011.
ajickarF
Frakcija
Časopis za izvedbene umjetnosti /
Performing Arts Journal
No. 55
ljeto/summer 2010.
drugo nepromijenjeno izdanje/second print run
proljeće/spring 2011.
izdavači Centar za dramsku umjetnost /
/ publishers Centre for Drama Art
Andrijevićeva 28, Zagreb, Croatia
&
Akademija dramske umjetnosti /
Academy of Drama Art
Trg maršala Tita 5, Zagreb, Croatia
adresa uredništva CDU − Centre for Drama Art
/ editorial address Andrijevićeva 28
10 000 Zagreb
Croatia
tel: +385 91 8929 747
e-mail: [email protected]
http://www.cdu.hr
urednici broja Florian Malzacher, Tea Tupajić, Petra Zanki
/ editors of this issue
uredništvo Ivana Ivković (glavna urednica / editor-in-chief)
/ editors Una Bauer, Marin Blažević, Goran Ferčec, Oliver
Frljić, Marko Kostanić, Ivana Sajko, Jasna Žmak
urednički savjet Ric Allsopp, Bojana Cvejić, Lada Čale Feldman,
/ editorial board Tomislav Brlek, Ivica Buljan, Matthew Goulish,
Agata Juniku, Florian Malzacher, Jon McKenzie,
Aldo Milohnić, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Heike Roms
tajnica uredništva Maja Mihaljević
/ editorial secretary
lektura Susan Jakopec
/ proof-reading
d&ad Ruta
typography Typonine Sans & Marlene Display
[Nikola Đurek → www.typonine.com]
printing Tiskara Zelina
podržali Gradski ured za kulturu Grada Zagreba /
/ supported by City Office for Culture Zagreb
Ministarstvo kulture Republike Hrvatske /
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
naslovnica Empty Stages, photographs by Tim Etchells &
/ cover Hugo Glendinning
This issue of Frakcija Performing Arts Journal
was created in partnership with The Curators'
Piece project
www.curatorspiece.net
Ovaj listić i kopiju uplate poslati poštom na adresu: / Please send this subscription form with copy of payment to the address:
FRAKCIJA, Performing Arts Journal, adresa / address: Centre for Drama Arts, Andrijaševićeva 28, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
tel: +385 91 8929 747, e-mail: [email protected]